85 replies to this topic

[FupDup]

El Bandito, on 12 January 2017 - 06:35 PM, said:

BV is just gonna convolute things even more. Suppose you assign BV to every weapon. But then certain variants do much better with certain weapons, than the rest. How are you gonna address that? By assigning higher BV to those variants? But what happens if players use other weapons with those variants and get punished for it?

I.E. a Gauss Rifle is trash on an Atlas but great on a Jagermech. Does each weapon have to have different BV per mech?

BaddieValue is not some kind of magical cure-all.

[Kargush]

"How Would You Address Balance?"

Carefully, and with great respect. "Yes, sir. Of course, sir. At once, sir."

[LordNothing]

i think pgi has finally got a handle on the balance problem. the number of tweaks that happened in the last patch, and the fact that they hired someone to do that one specific job. you just need to let the patch cycles iterate. if you think its bad now wait till skill trees necessitate the total deletion of quirks. some of those quirks can be rolled into the mechs, others into the weapons, but there are still a lot of outlines that wont fit anywhere. those will likely be what is covered by the skill trees. its going to be much different than it is now.

[PhoenixFire55]

MechaBattler, on 11 January 2017 - 08:21 PM, said:

How do we reduced the gap between a potato mech and a meta mech? There's always going to be a gap. But how can we make it smaller?

Meta is dictated by gameplay, i.e. hide > peek > high alpha > hide, which also tend to happen at 400-800m ranges most of the time. Make gameplay much more diverse and you'll have far more viable mechs. To make gameplay diverse you need to have proper maps instead of "balanced" maps, i.e. more maps like Polar with no cover at all and more maps with nothing but cover and open spaces of 100-200m tops etc. Make objectives actually matter, i.e. defending your base, capping and defending cap points, make dynamic objectives to force teams to spread into small groups focused on different tasks in different corners of the map and so on. Make mechs that dedicate most of their tonnage into speed viable by creating huge maps with spread out objectives, i.e. make actual scouting and tactical thinking a necessity.

In order to do all that you need a different devs team that actually knows what its doing and that'll be dedicated to MWO rather than pretending to do smth here while all resources are funneled towards MW5. But thats never gonna happen.

Edited by PhoenixFire55, 13 January 2017 - 02:21 AM.

[TopDawg]

Alan Davion, on 12 January 2017 - 03:22 PM, said:

Snip

I can't help but think back to the good ol' days of playing Chrome Hounds on my 360. I was in a great unit with a half-dozen other guys and we worked so well together, even without one of us playing a commander mech we knew the fastest routes to the COMBAS towers, even on some of the really big maps.

Hell I remember a lot of the time taking a speedy little quad-wheel hound, zipping down one side of the map and hitting the enemy COMBAS towers from behind, denying them comms and radar before ducking back out, forcing the enemy to send one of their hounds to recapture the tower, putting them at less than effective strength for my team mates to surround and stomp.

And those maps were easily 3 times bigger than what we have here in MWO.

Also been watching some MW:LL videos as of late, and those maps are at least 5 times bigger than MWO.

I really think MWOs gameplay needs to be slowed down by a considerable margin here.

It would give teams a reason to take lights, run out to some mountain or another, scout the enemy to allow the main force to find a route to trap, flank or end run the enemy force, while at the same time having the lights heading for the enemy base or some sort of objective, which would force the enemy commander to think, "do we turn around, try to smack those lights and risk getting ganked by the main enemy force, or do we keep going and try to overpower the enemy force and then try and finish off the lights".

THAT is a "thinking mans shooter".

Not the steaming pile of crap we have right now.

I never played Chromehounds, but I did play the original PlanetSide a lot, which involved pretty big areas to cover which led to a lot of strategies and the like, different roles, logistics, etc.

But yeah, I just don't see any way to introduce grander strategies, meaningful objectives, and finally some 'Mech roles--all of which would lead to more 'Mechs being viable because there would finally be different jobs to perform, rather than slight variations on 'kill all enemies'--without increasing map sizes a fair bit (and then tweaking the corresponding systems as needed).

I've been out of the loop for a while, but here's to hoping? If PGI did it once, it stands to reason they could possibly do it again (although maybe they don't have the resources to make maps anymore? - I don't really know the releasing dates of all the changes and new maps since coming back).

[Bud Crue]

LordNothing, on 13 January 2017 - 12:13 AM, said:

i think pgi has finally got a handle on the balance problem...

I uh...Umm... So you think...Wait a sec...
I am at a loss for words.

[LordNothing]

Bud Crue, on 13 January 2017 - 06:09 AM, said:

I uh...Umm... So you think...Wait a sec...
I am at a loss for words.

based entirely on number of changes in last patch, and the fact that they have hired someone to do it. having a handle is completely different from leveraging it effectively. so my salt mine is fully intact and open for buisness.

[Bud Crue]

LordNothing, on 13 January 2017 - 06:36 AM, said:

based entirely on number of changes in last patch, and the fact that they have hired someone to do it. having a handle is completely different from leveraging it effectively. so my salt mine is fully intact and open for buisness.

Is that the patch where the Mad IIc dropped, they increased SRM heat, nerfed the gauss, increased heat sink dissipation (after having a PTS for the ED mechanism which was designed to reduce alphas)?

No, I think they are still grasping. I have previously asserted that balance was close, and that the primary tech imbalance was one of outliers (Kodiak-3, Night Gyr/Timber, Hunch IIc, Arctic Cheetah) but seeing the disparity in CW 4.1, and then subsequent efforts by good teams and players to show that the IS can still compete yet failing to make any appreciable headway, shows me that balance in this game is far worse than even my outlier theory accounted for.

Be it CW, or the leaderboards; all the observable data that we have at our disposal as players shows that the clan mechs are overwhelmingly superior to the vast majority of IS mechs, and I don't see that changing anytime soon (in fact I expect it to get a lot worse if the squrks tree changes accompany large sale removal of many IS mechs quirks).

Perhaps you are right in that the new person in charge of the dartboard will make strides toward improving balance in the future. I just don't think so, and I certainly don't think the changes made in the last pass suggest any great strides forward.

Edited by Bud Crue, 13 January 2017 - 06:56 AM.

[Sjorpha]

Almond Brown, on 12 January 2017 - 09:24 AM, said:

So, change the name from MechWarrior, a BattleTech Game, to GenericWarrior, a BalancedTech Game... That would work but what happens if it is done and that "Lore Mob" just doesn't show up? It is called Game Over and that would be absolutely tragic given how long some waited for a new MechWarrior game to return. Which btw is responsible for the spawning of a new "BattleTech" game ffs. So say whatever one wants about them, let's not never forget that it is/was PGI that rekindled the MechWarrior/BattleTech franchise.

The more unbalanced a game is, the more generic it is in practice. When did you last see a mech using single heatsinks and standard structure in a high tier match? How is keeping 50% of the game's content away from the actual battlefield supposed to make it more battletech? Because that is what happens when you leave things overpowered or underpowered, everyone just uses the useful stuff and you see less variety on the field. If you leave a game mode like faction play unbalanced you don't get "battletech", you just get a non-funtional game mode.

Going through the game piece by piece the way I suggested and making it all balanced wouldn't make the game much less battletech than it is now, and it wouldn't be more generic either because all the things would still function in different ways just like now, the only difference would be that everything would be equally worth using, which would actually increase in-match diversity and make the game LESS generic because you'd actually see mechs using standard structure and so on. It would also make the game a lot better, both casually and competitively. The new player experience would be better since the basic tech they could afford would be worth using.

There is simply no good reason to deliberately keep the game unbalanced, it's an old silly taboo that is super unhealthy for the battletech franchise. It's ok to change things. It's ok to abandon old stupid decisions. It's a bad idea to cling to bad design just because it's old.

It's time for battletech to evolve and embrace a healthy principled balance approach between Clan and IS, that includes tabletop and the rpg and so on. I play these games and the strict upgrade nonsense is bad for those games too IMO.

Edited by Sjorpha, 13 January 2017 - 07:30 AM.

[Alan Davion]

Sjorpha, on 13 January 2017 - 07:18 AM, said:

It's ok to abandon old stupid decisions. It's a bad idea to cling to bad design just because it's old.

Tell that to the people that thought it was a good idea to make the Phoenix mechs a "limited" time thing.

And to the people that thought it was a good idea to vote against letting PGI sell the Phoenix mechs again.

Those were some bad f***ing ideas and they did it anyway.

[Gas Guzzler]

I mean, bad mechs either have bad geometry and/or low mounted hardpoints and may be in a non-ideal tonnage bracket (60 ton heavy for example). Give them extra hit points, or give it some desirable offensive boosts, or buff agility, or somewhere in between.

Few hardpoints isn't always bad. You just have to take a couple large weapons instead of boating smaller weapons. Each one is viable in one situation or another. PGI has made atrocious mechs decent before, its not hard, its just a matter of dialing it in instead of just giga buffing something, letting it fester for a few months, and then giganerfing it because of whining.

Energy draw does nothing to address the gap between good mechs and bad mechs, because good mechs and bad mechs were affected differently by Energy Draw. Some good mechs weren't even hurt by Energy Draw, and some bad mechs were actually nerfed by Energy Draw, so why you would say that might have been a good way to bridge the gap between good mechs and bad mechs is beyond me..

[MechaBattler]

Gas Guzzler, on 13 January 2017 - 10:32 AM, said:

I mean, bad mechs either have bad geometry and/or low mounted hardpoints and may be in a non-ideal tonnage bracket (60 ton heavy for example). Give them extra hit points, or give it some desirable offensive boosts, or buff agility, or somewhere in between.

Few hardpoints isn't always bad. You just have to take a couple large weapons instead of boating smaller weapons. Each one is viable in one situation or another. PGI has made atrocious mechs decent before, its not hard, its just a matter of dialing it in instead of just giga buffing something, letting it fester for a few months, and then giganerfing it because of whining.

Energy draw does nothing to address the gap between good mechs and bad mechs, because good mechs and bad mechs were affected differently by Energy Draw. Some good mechs weren't even hurt by Energy Draw, and some bad mechs were actually nerfed by Energy Draw, so why you would say that might have been a good way to bridge the gap between good mechs and bad mechs is beyond me..

It tightens what is considered an acceptable alpha. If you want more alpha, you have to pack more heatsinks to compensate for heat and you probably won't be able to reach the alpha sizes we have now. Especially if they also change heatsinks, lower capacity and higher dissipation. Encourages more persistent fire instead of alphas all the time. Isn't that what people have always said? Alphas weren't meant to be fire every time they're up. Quirks can address low hard points and big hitboxes. But across the whole spectrum tighter alpha would keep things at a more attainable level. Instead of continuous power creep.

You say few hard points isn't bad. But what if it's mixed. Like the vindicator and wolverines. Game doesn't really encourage mix builds.

[Lightfoot]

Map selection before Mech selection with drop decks or other system.

Why we have Mechlab really is to configure a load-out to best support the mission. You'll see in MechWarrior 5 that you will Mechlab after the mission briefing, maybe your engineer will even prompt you about the best load-out. It's just traditional balance for MechWarrior to allow the weapons to be balanced by the map. MWO balances them to be neutral/ vanilla with no weapon being better than another which is impossible and creates a more shallow level of gameplay in the attempt. Requires things like Ghost Heat and Gauss Charge-up and Energy Draw and DHS 1.4. It forces LRMs to be worthless and AC20 shells to travel at 650 meters per second.

Now when you put the responsibility of choosing the correct load-out for the map on the player, it allows those weapons to return to their correct tactical balance, become dangerous under the right map conditions. Would every player take the best weapons? Yes. They would have to. Then PGI would not need to make them all into this vanilla-balance which will always slightly favor Lasers. If players got beat, it would be because they took the wrong weapons load-out, not a balance issue. It would mean the end of meta load-outs and the beginning of correct load-outs.

I have to rofl when some players think that Mechlab after Map Selection is some form of OP min-max set-up when it's just the opposite. It provides a balance point that prevents players from running specialized min-max builds.

Mechlab after Map Selection is the correct pvp game launch method used by all previous MechWarrior games. MWO is just the first MechWarrior game that has not been able to implement it due to the need to provide a quick game launch for 24 random players. But a drop deck of 2-3 pre-configured mechs of the same Class would allow it in essence. MWO would become much more dynamic. A deeper player experience and much easier to BALANCE.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MechaBattler, on 13 January 2017 - 11:31 AM, said:

It tightens what is considered an acceptable alpha. If you want more alpha, you have to pack more heatsinks to compensate for heat

No, because the extra heat couldn't really be compensated by more heat sinks well enough which is why you saw DPS focused builds in the ED PTS.

MechaBattler, on 13 January 2017 - 11:31 AM, said:

You say few hard points isn't bad. But what if it's mixed. Like the vindicator and wolverines. Game doesn't really encourage mix builds.

One of those doesn't have a hardpoint quantity problem. The Vindicator runs 2 (ER)PPCs and that is it, just like the HBK-IIC-A and Summoner with loyalty pods. The problem the Vindi has is terrible placement of those PPCs and the fact that PPC don't compare well against cERPPs.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 13 January 2017 - 11:42 AM.

[Gas Guzzler]

MechaBattler, on 13 January 2017 - 11:31 AM, said:

It tightens what is considered an acceptable alpha. If you want more alpha, you have to pack more heatsinks to compensate for heat and you probably won't be able to reach the alpha sizes we have now. Especially if they also change heatsinks, lower capacity and higher dissipation. Encourages more persistent fire instead of alphas all the time. Isn't that what people have always said? Alphas weren't meant to be fire every time they're up. Quirks can address low hard points and big hitboxes. But across the whole spectrum tighter alpha would keep things at a more attainable level. Instead of continuous power creep.

You say few hard points isn't bad. But what if it's mixed. Like the vindicator and wolverines. Game doesn't really encourage mix builds.

Mixes of ballistic and energy, and ballistic and missiles, and energy and missiles often work out fine. The Vindicators issues is the low placement of hardpoints and being a 45 tonner is kind of an awkward tonnage range. The Wolverine's issue is all the lasers in the right arm. Which if you'll remember was rectified for a time when the WVR-6K was one of the best mediums in the game. But it was deemed over quirked and was subsequently overnerfed. The -7K is still a solid SRM brawler, but there are better options due to better quirks. Back to the -6K, getting a bit of quirks back might make it worth it again.

"Alpha's shouldn't be used all the time" is said because in the novels (fluff) weapons were described to fire at different times a lot because its more interesting to read. Some authors still have characters alphaing all the time. Either way, that is just BS rationale that is spouted by people who want people to chainfire all the time because that is what MechWarrior is about in their opinion. Yet... the MechWarrior franchise has a history of people alpha striking frequently, with no mechanics to stop you from doing so. Maybe some players chose not to play that way, and now that they have to play in the pool with all the other kids see that people DO play that way, they have issues with it because it interferes with their private Mech fantasy. Sorry, but I DGAF about someone's private mech fantasy in a PvP game.

You also have to define what an alpha is. For some mechs an alpha is 2 PPCs or 3 Large lasers. In some lore builds, those loadouts would be mixed with other weapons, so firing all of them wouldn't be considered an alpha. Yet now that we have to strip other weapons to stack heat sinks to be more efficient, it suddenly is an alpha. In other words, what an alpha is, is entirely arbitrary. So you don't like big groups of weapons firing at once? Frankly, a Vindicator can run 2 PPCs and do okay, its just worse than the BJ-3 at exactly the same thing. The firepower is identical, but the Vindicator has bigger arms and low mounted hardpoints. It needs to have something to make up for its disadvantages. Energy Draw does nothing to address this. Vindicators can run 3 LPLs too.

The big alpha discussion doesn't REALLY come into play until you get to the Heavy class.... but most heavy mechs don't have an issue with numbers of hardpoints and being able to put out big damage. Literally every single one can do big powerful "alphas". What makes them different is high tightly their hardpoints are spread (poor CTF), or their geometry, or their quirks, or low vs high hardpoints. None of which is addressed by anything other than quirks. Energy draw won't fix it.

The best mediums already just have 2 PPCs, or 4 SRM packs. There is no way they can power creep mediums beyond the HBK-IIC... with all of its high hardpoints, and Energy Draw does NOTHING to address that.

[C E Dwyer]

Balance isn't the number of weapons it's where they are on the mech

Best build for what is probably the best medium in the game, the Hunchback IIC is a pair of ERPPC's before the heat nerf it can be argued the Uac10 x 2 was best, but with the ERPPC buffs it's clearly the poptart

Best three Heavies Night Gyr Summoner, and Timber wolf, best assault Kodiak, all have one thing in common, very high hard points. Summoner was pretty bad until they buffed PPC's and with the loyalty mech it's now easily one of the best, with the caveat that the people playing them have to be capable of aiming somewhat competently.

Doesn't matter what you give other mechs as a bonus, unless you go into the area of stupid quirks, these mechs will always be the best as long as the hard points remain where they are, and certain weapons are not nerfed into uselessness

It was stupid to introduce these mechs, or in the timberwolfs case certain omnipods, because it shows how bad P.G.I are at understanding their game, the designer of the Kodiak even inflated it's ballistic hard points on the Kdk-3

This game will never be balanced, poor choices by the company and the heads of various departments have ensured the game will remain broken and Faction warfare pointless.

[Gas Guzzler]

Cathy, on 13 January 2017 - 11:59 AM, said:

Balance isn't the number of weapons it's where they are on the mech

Best build for what is probably the best medium in the game, the Hunchback IIC is a pair of ERPPC's before the heat nerf it can be argued the Uac10 x 2 was best, but with the ERPPC buffs it's clearly the poptart

Best three Heavies Night Gyr Summoner, and Timber wolf, best assault Kodiak, all have one thing in common, very high hard points. Summoner was pretty bad until they buffed PPC's and with the loyalty mech it's now easily one of the best, with the caveat that the people playing them have to be capable of aiming somewhat competently.

Doesn't matter what you give other mechs as a bonus, unless you go into the area of stupid quirks, these mechs will always be the best as long as the hard points remain where they are, and certain weapons are not nerfed into uselessness

It was stupid to introduce these mechs, or in the timberwolfs case certain omnipods, because it shows how bad P.G.I are at understanding their game, the designer of the Kodiak even inflated it's ballistic hard points on the Kdk-3

This game will never be balanced, poor choices by the company and the heads of various departments have ensured the game will remain broken and Faction warfare pointless.

You mean poor choices like releasing popular mechs? I guess...

For the record, the Timber Wolf doesn't use high hardpoints. It has the two peeps on the chin and the gauss in a low slung arm.

And... is a quirkset stupid if it makes a mech a viable alternative to a premium high hardpoint mech?

Edited by Gas Guzzler, 13 January 2017 - 12:19 PM.

[Bud Crue]

Cathy, on 13 January 2017 - 11:59 AM, said:

Balance isn't the number of weapons it's where they are on the mech

Best build for what is probably the best medium in the game, the Hunchback IIC is a pair of ERPPC's before the heat nerf it can be argued the Uac10 x 2 was best, but with the ERPPC buffs it's clearly the poptart

Best three Heavies Night Gyr Summoner, and Timber wolf, best assault Kodiak, all have one thing in common, very high hard points. Summoner was pretty bad until they buffed PPC's and with the loyalty mech it's now easily one of the best, with the caveat that the people playing them have to be capable of aiming somewhat competently.

Doesn't matter what you give other mechs as a bonus, unless you go into the area of stupid quirks, these mechs will always be the best as long as the hard points remain where they are, and certain weapons are not nerfed into uselessness

It was stupid to introduce these mechs, or in the timberwolfs case certain omnipods, because it shows how bad P.G.I are at understanding their game, the designer of the Kodiak even inflated it's ballistic hard points on the Kdk-3

This game will never be balanced, poor choices by the company and the heads of various departments have ensured the game will remain broken and Faction warfare pointless.

Yup. 100%

"unless you go into the area of stupid quirks"

Therein lies potential salvation.

Alas, PGI and its predilection for broad based, formulaic solutions is obsessed with eliminating quirks or applying them equally in all cases (see Uac pass, see December patch notes regarding SRMs, the removing of MG quirks in light of MG buff, etc.). This 'all things should be treated equal even when they are most certainly not' version of balance by quirks will keep doing things like nerfing middling mechs (see UAC nerf to Enforcer 5P and Shadow Hawk 3M) while doing nothing to rein in superior performers (like Kodiak-3). But that is the PGI model atm.

I think they need to change that model, and look at each mech and each variant, and apply those quirks -stupid level- or otherwise, on an individual and iterative basis relative to the best performer in a given class (and given role). Not create and measure by an abstract base line target value (see Tina Benoit's posts following the UAC pass) that only PGI has a sense of. Until then, "balance" is an arcane and mysterious thing that may as well be done by dart or Ouija board.

[Y E O N N E]

I find the claim that PGI's solutions are formulaic, dubious. I think it's arcane.

[Deathlike]

Yeonne Greene, on 13 January 2017 - 12:33 PM, said:

I find the claim that PGI's solutions are formulaic, dubious. I think it's arcane.

Fixed for you.