79 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

If only everyone took something more meta.

Again, you don't seem to understand the concept.

'meta' is just 'whatever works best'.

That's it. Whatever mech, loadouts, weapons, strategies and tactics that work best.

The inability to understand that is what makes people think trying to 'punish' skill, good positioning and using what works is somehow going to be effective.

Here's the really funny bit -

the bad players would still lose. Even more than now because a locked game environment just widens the gap between good and bad mechs. They would continue to lose just like they do now for taking bad mechs, TTK would drop like a stone as armor values plummeted.

I can make a 'meta' (as in what actually works to kill mechs) build out of 20 different mechs that's all very, very similar. That sort of system would just encourage people to make and bring more bad mechs - where they would still get farmed, just harder, and now when they do luck into a good build or intelligent decision on what to play they're going to get punished.

There's no benefit in any way to such a game save in the illusion that it's 'more like TT because stock builds' even though TT had plenty of mech customization, golden bb crit kills and was way more luck than skill.

Is that what's really missed in these ideas? The idea that if you can reduce more of the skill in playing to luck it will somehow make it 'better'?

I say this as someone who still plays TT battletech. By the way? Everyone I game with thought the Roughneck was absolutely sexy as f*** and an awesome addition to the game; they found a damage, salvageable one and are now brutally fighting over who gets to play it. The absurd idealism seen in this game for 'pure' TT rules/mechs/etc is a bad illusion. Even in TT there was a meta, good mechs/bad mechs and if you actually had a reward for winning and gave everyone only one mech 99 players out of 100 would pick the best mech and use 'the meta'...

because, again. The Meta is just what works best. Most Effective Tactic (or Tool) Available. Winning is more fun than losing especially when winning gets more rewards than losing. One team wins, one team loses every match. People who are willing and able to wrap their heads around that and enjoy being the one who wins more than the one who loses are always going to leverage that.

Trying to limit choices, create artificial barriers and punish people for making good decisions is still not going to make bad players better.

[ice trey]

MischiefSC, on 16 February 2017 - 10:31 PM, said:

'meta' is just 'whatever works best'.

That's it. Whatever mech, loadouts, weapons, strategies and tactics that work best.

I'm going to focus on your point because how much you play this, or battletech, or how everyone is a bad, is besides the point.

Yes, there always will be a meta to a game. There is accounting for skill for how well a player does. What I'm talking about is reducing the power gap between each unit. So that the disparity in performance between whether you took the most or least popular mechs in the game is minimised to the point of irrelevance. When players who want to be competitive and helpful to the team aren't obligated to take the top 20% of mechs or be derided for holding the team back.

In my books, if that means a Madcat is worth 105 tons and a vindicator worth 25 tons, if both feel like the usefulness-per-ton are on par with each other, the game (or at least fp dropdecks) has finally reached a balanced state.

Edited by ice trey, 16 February 2017 - 10:57 PM.

[KinLuu]

No, the correct answer would be to adjust the power level of both the overperforming and the underperforming mechs in a way that makes them more equal. Either by giving the overperforming mechs a handicap, or by giving the underperforming mechs a boost.

Aka quirks. Aka one of the few things PGI did (almost) right.

Edited by KinLuu, 16 February 2017 - 11:03 PM.

[ice trey]

KinLuu, on 16 February 2017 - 11:03 PM, said:

No, the correct answer would be to adjust the power level of both the overperforming and the underperforming mechs in a way that makes them more equal. Either by giving the overperforming mechs a handicap, or by giving the underperforming mechs a boost.

Aka quirks. Aka one of the few things PGI did (almost) right.

Possibly, but the biggest fault with it is that PGI don't seem to be able to get the concept of balance down, nor react fast enough to their own changes, giving certain mechs permanent popularity, others obscurity, and the rest teetering between strength and irrelevance. It feels far less like they're trying for balance, far more to keep the community off balance and buying more mechpacks in order to stay ahead of the meta-curve they have the freedom to set.

A community-driven value「economy」with frequent automated updates would help to level the playing field. The amount of variables to consider with quirks would be too difficult to do, but a simple blanketing mech value modifier could be easily tracked and modified.

I think we're arguing for the same goal, just different means to get there.

[justcallme A S H]

ice trey, on 16 February 2017 - 10:54 PM, said:

I'm going to focus on your point because how much you play this, or battletech, or how everyone is a bad, is besides the point.

Yes, there always will be a meta to a game. There is accounting for skill for how well a player does. What I'm talking about is reducing the power gap between each unit. So that the disparity in performance between whether you took the most or least popular mechs in the game is minimised to the point of irrelevance. When players who want to be competitive and helpful to the team aren't obligated to take the top 20% of mechs or be derided for holding the team back.

In my books, if that means a Madcat is worth 105 tons and a vindicator worth 25 tons, if both feel like the usefulness-per-ton are on par with each other, the game (or at least fp dropdecks) has finally reached a balanced state.

The most unbalanced part of FP - Teamwork. Always has, always will be. It has nothing to do with the mechs.

Say a 12-man drops all night with troll mechs/builds in this "automatically balancing" mode of yours. They don't lose any drops all night. 150+ wins collectively. This happens a few times in a week because that is all they can do under the "locked/stock" mech system. So 400+ wins on a certain mech over all others. Cause realistically, even in rubbish mechs - teamwork will win most of the time. That is just a fact.

Now the auto-system "balances" this. A mech that was medicore to start is now punished even further because it's now his with some automated balance system?

If the system balances weekly, fortnightly, monthly - People will constantly keep having to edit and recalc drop decks each time etc etc. That also will jack people off badly. One tonnage change every 6 months is annoying... More often? Ugh.

I don't think you've thought about anything you suggest here and the major flaws contained within it.

[ice trey]

justcallme A S H, on 17 February 2017 - 12:15 AM, said:

The most unbalanced part of FP - Teamwork. Always has, always will be. It has nothing to do with the mechs.

Say a 12-man drops all night with troll mechs/builds in this "automatically balancing" mode of yours. They don't lose any drops all night. 150+ wins collectively. This happens a few times in a week because that is all they can do under the "locked/stock" mech system. So 400+ wins on a certain mech over all others. Cause realistically, even in rubbish mechs - teamwork will win most of the time. That is just a fact.

Now the auto-system "balances" this. A mech that was medicore to start is now punished even further because it's now his with some automated balance system?

If the system balances weekly, fortnightly, monthly - People will constantly keep having to edit and recalc drop decks each time etc etc. That also will jack people off badly. One tonnage change every 6 months is annoying... More often? Ugh.

I don't think you've thought about anything you suggest here and the major flaws contained within it.

I never said anything about winning with a mech, just taking a mech. If one guy in the team uses the same mech over and over, probably less of an issue. They'd have to play it enough to skew the numbers for the entire community - maybe not impossible considering FP's player base, but improbable. It's when everyone and their mother is using the same mech that you would see it getting dialed back. It's when next to nobody takes a mech that you'd see it getting discounted. Like when clanners used nothing but TW/SC spam, and when the IS could only counter with entire decks worth of T-bolts. All of those would get jacked up in Drop-deck allowance costs. Meanwhile I don't think I'd ever seen anyone fielding Victors or Summoners during CW1, so cutting them in costs until they start showing up in the games again makes for better variation on the playing field. You know how every clanner and their mother takes the Arctic Cheetah? How many tons does the Arctic Cheetah have to be worth, cutting into your other options, before you start contemplating bringing something else? Vice versa, how cheap do Kit Foxes and Adders have to be for people to use them?

Side note, the same drop deck every match? You don't find that gets stale, or needs swapping out based on conditions? It's the rare occasion I use the same drop deck two matches in a row. Maybe one or two staples so I don't run out of time on a 60-second timer. If there are mechs that are so good that they don't need to be swapped out based on the conditions, maybe they need to be dialed back.

Edited by ice trey, 17 February 2017 - 12:51 AM.

[justcallme A S H]

So if a mech isn't based on wins, or match performance - how the hell else do you balance it? That is the ONLY way.

I use an Kit Fox all the time though?

Ye I run "META" but I also run "WEVS" a lot of the time too, just to change it up. That said I won't run LRM decks unless I've got a team backing me - cause they are just rubbish, especially in PUG matches.

That said in the peak times, I always run META - Why? Cause I will face other teams running META (ok, except CWI/WTAU, they just LRM). But apart from that it's an even playing field cause the other teams are META as well.

So why then do stock loadouts even matter? It's the best builds against the best builds. So they are negated.
It now comes down to one thing

TEAMWORK.

Who works better as a team. That is is. That is all it has ever been.

You come up with a way to balance effective team work (and not punish those who have it), I'm all ears.

A "stock only" mech discussion is not effective in balancing poor teamwork, it will be even WORSE in that scenario.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 17 February 2017 - 01:03 AM.

[justcallme A S H]

ice trey, on 17 February 2017 - 12:43 AM, said:

Side note, the same drop deck every match? You don't find that gets stale, or needs swapping out based on conditions?

And look at this drop I am in right now. More variety there than you can poke a stick at... 9 different mechs in 12.

It's like that, most matches.

Hardly boring or "the same" each match.

[ice trey]

justcallme A S H, on 17 February 2017 - 12:55 AM, said:

I use an Kit Fox all the time though?

Ye I run "META" but I also run "WEVS" a lot of the time too, just to change it up. That said I won't run LRM decks unless I've got a team backing me - cause they are just rubbish, especially in PUG matches.

That said in the peak times, I always run META - Why? Cause I will face other teams running META (ok, except CWI/WTAU, they just LRM). But apart from that it's an even playing field cause the other teams are META as well.

So why then do stock loadouts even matter? It's the best builds against the best builds. So they are negated.
It now comes down to one thing

TEAMWORK.

Who works better as a team. That is is. That is all it has ever been.

You come up with a way to balance effective team work (and not punish those who have it), I'm all ears.

A "stock only" mech discussion is not effective in balancing poor teamwork, it will be even WORSE in that scenario.

That's cool, but this goes beyond the scope of one person. I used the Kitfox as an example more than anything else. It's a placeholder for "Bad Mech". Whether a given machine really deserves that title is up for debate, but if not enough people are taking it, there's not enough incentive to.

One or two people won't be enough to skew the numbers of the community as a whole unless they're dropping 24/7 and getting matches at a way faster rate than the rest of us. What I'm talking about is dropping and seeing nothing but a select few units on both your and the other side in nearly every match. The reason is obvious, those are the "Good" mechs. There is an incentive to take them. More of an incentive to take them than the other mechs that aren't being taken. Those mechs that if taken, their teammates disparage them and their opponents see as a sign of being a "bad".

The mechs that are truely the middle ground, floating somewhere between the median, likely won't see any changes, it's just the top stuff that gets made too expensive to take lightly, and the bottom stuff that gets too cheap to pass up.

justcallme A S H, on 17 February 2017 - 01:03 AM, said:

And look at this drop I am in right now. More variety there than you can poke a stick at... 9 different mechs in 12.

It's like that, most matches.

Hardly boring or "the same" each match.

I said your dropdeck, not your teammates.

[justcallme A S H]

I run any mix of the following:

NTG / TBR / HBR / EBJ / ACH / KFX / SHC / HBK / WHK / NVA / MDD

Depends on the map, mode and what the team is doing.

Hardly "boring" at all.

What would be boring though. Running locked mechs, that are limited to a single build. That would get boring, real fast. 71% of people thus far agree. No surprise.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 17 February 2017 - 02:00 AM.

[ice trey]

justcallme A S H, on 17 February 2017 - 12:55 AM, said:

So if a mech isn't based on wins, or match performance - how the hell else do you balance it? That is the ONLY way.

Frequency of getting selected in a drop deck. If a mech is good, most people are going to use it. If it's bad, most people won't use it. That goes beyond who is tier 1 and who is in a unit. That's everyone that plays the game. Even a number of Tier 4 and 5 players are mimicking the various metamechs builds out there and trying to git gud by taking what everyone else takes, if not just listening to whoever's calling the match and taking what they say to bring.

Based on that fact alone, the FP community would balance itself out. Even the biggest units using troll decks would have to play all the time using only troll-decks in order to outdrop the rest of the community enough to skew the numbers to the point that the top tier mechs fall into "Average" drop rates, and even then, they'd have to drop with those troll mechs consistently, because with the system updating every week, maybe keeping the stats of the past two weeks, if they slacked off the numbers would naturally bounce back to their order and balance each-other out again.

Plus, if the goal is to spice the game up and add variety rather than seeing the same 20% of mechs over and over, seeing 228 or the like running around in Panthers and Catapult C1s for a week trying to upset game balance does the job, one way or another.

Edited by ice trey, 17 February 2017 - 02:00 AM.

[ice trey]

justcallme A S H, on 17 February 2017 - 01:59 AM, said:

NTG / TBR / HBR / EBJ / ACH / KFX / SHC / HBK / WHK / NVA / MDD

Ok. No surprises really, but Ok.
Still, if you're swapping between all those units between matches, what's this "Editing/Recalculating" business that is so difficult for people to do every six months. You don't just add mechs you want to use until you're relatively close to or meet the tonnage limit?

[MischiefSC]

ice trey, on 17 February 2017 - 02:13 AM, said:

Ok. No surprises really, but Ok.
Still, if you're swapping between all those units between matches, what's this "Editing/Recalculating" business that is so difficult for people to do every six months. You don't just add mechs you want to use until you're relatively close to or meet the tonnage limit?

Except what you're doing is trying to balance mechs but trying to force people to take bad ones.

If it's effective, you want to punish people for taking it to try and get them to take a bad mech.

Balance the mechs in their weight classes better.

Besides which, what about players who only own 4 or 6 or 12 mechs?

[ice trey]

MischiefSC, on 17 February 2017 - 02:20 AM, said:

Except what you're doing is trying to balance mechs but trying to force people to take bad ones.

If it's effective, you want to punish people for taking it to try and get them to take a bad mech.

I see no problem with this, we've just changed the balancing system from Tonnage to "Not-quite-Battlevalue".
Taking a bad mech means you can take more tons worth of mechs elsewhere.
It's like complaining that you can't take four Dire Wolves, no, you work around that fact. By taking four less popular mechs, you could potentially be bringing way more tonnage than normal, or by taking only meta builds, be bringing less than you normally could, or you balance out taking super popular mechs with less popular ones.

So long as chasing the meta matters enough to care, there's a problem.

MischiefSC, on 17 February 2017 - 02:20 AM, said:

Balance the mechs in their weight classes better.

Yes, I would love this, but PGI have proven they can't, or just won't. If people are getting measurable advantages by taking certain mechs and consistently winning, chances are, everyone's aping it. Balancing mechs is what is needed for QP, private matches, and single drops, for sure. For anything where there's a drop-deck with a tonnage allocation, a popularity-based cost-balancing system would work perfectly well, unless PGI started tampering with it in order to skew numbers to get more mechpacks sold.

MischiefSC, on 17 February 2017 - 02:20 AM, said:

Besides which, what about players who only own 4 or 6 or 12 mechs?

From my experience, players with numbers that low are dependant on padding their drop decks with trial mechs anyway.

Edited by ice trey, 17 February 2017 - 02:45 AM.

[The Basilisk]

If someone says "We want stock mechs in a lore environment" this actually means "We want a game where driving lore mechs in a lore environment with lore loadouts work"

And if you pose such a poll in such a singleminded, weired and twisted/perverted fashion where opinions opsing yours only can be wrong and nothing else, well....then this is clearly one of this threads made by a minmaxing, minimum viable product loophole exploiter tryhard to recive back pats from his tryhard friends.

Wait what ?? Exploit ???

Yes, when a game is so oversimplyfied like MWO that its sheer amounts of bandaids convolute that much that you can minmax the sh.. out of it, using this fact to "get good" is simply exploiting poor game mechanics in disfavor of people who actually want to play the game like it is meant instead of exploiting every little unwanted but existing mechanic that exists.

You dear Ashe are a game exploiter that trys to warp reality to suit your needs to further your opinion instead of questioning and trying to understand what is behind other peoples Opinions.

If you simply would say you like the game as it is and you want a simplyfied casual mech shooter style version of MWO and simply put up a poll who likes this too...well go ahead but please stop trying to discredit ppl who just want this game to be more BATTLETECH and less legotech.

[Emeraudes]

The Basilisk, on 17 February 2017 - 03:55 AM, said:

If someone says "We want stock mechs in a lore environment" this actually means "We want a game where driving lore mechs in a lore environment with lore loadouts work"

And if you pose such a poll in such a singleminded, weired and twisted/perverted fashion where opinions opsing yours only can be wrong and nothing else, well....then this is clearly one of this threads made by a minmaxing, minimum viable product loophole exploiter tryhard to recive back pats from his tryhard friends.

Wait what ?? Exploit ???

Yes, when a game is so oversimplyfied like MWO that its sheer amounts of bandaids convolute that much that you can minmax the sh.. out of it, using this fact to "get good" is simply exploiting poor game mechanics in disfavor of people who actually want to play the game like it is meant instead of exploiting every little unwanted but existing mechanic that exists.

You dear Ashe are a game exploiter that trys to warp reality to suit your needs to further your opinion instead of questioning and trying to understand what is behind other peoples Opinions.

If you simply would say you like the game as it is and you want a simplyfied casual mech shooter style version of MWO and simply put up a poll who likes this too...well go ahead but please stop trying to discredit ppl who just want this game to be more BATTLETECH and less legotech.

Alright then suppose PGI agrees with you and actually balanced the mechs and weapon systems perfectly to encapsulate all lore builds, make them run as decently as any of the current meta or any other custom build in that new balance. I'll still go for the most powerful version of any build lore or not when I'm playing my matches.

Would it be a problem then?

[justcallme A S H]

The Basilisk, on 17 February 2017 - 03:55 AM, said:

You dear Ashe are a game exploiter that trys to warp reality to suit your needs to further your opinion instead of questioning and trying to understand what is behind other peoples Opinions.

No see that is where you are wrong.

This is a simple question. A question that seeks to find out what people want.

The "majority", "apparently", want it to be stock mechs on FP. So how more involved does the question need to be? Fact is, it doesn't. Simple, succinct, precise.

The shart-talker in question started another thread and, was also caught out there as well. It comes as ZERO surprise. Why? Cause it is a stupid idea, from a very tiny corner of the MWO community. A view the vast majority does not share - FACT.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 17 February 2017 - 07:04 AM.

[MacClearly]

The Basilisk, on 17 February 2017 - 03:55 AM, said:

If someone says "We want stock mechs in a lore environment" this actually means "We want a game where driving lore mechs in a lore environment with lore loadouts work"

And if you pose such a poll in such a singleminded, weired and twisted/perverted fashion where opinions opsing yours only can be wrong and nothing else, well....then this is clearly one of this threads made by a minmaxing, minimum viable product loophole exploiter tryhard to recive back pats from his tryhard friends.

Wait what ?? Exploit ???

Yes, when a game is so oversimplyfied like MWO that its sheer amounts of bandaids convolute that much that you can minmax the sh.. out of it, using this fact to "get good" is simply exploiting poor game mechanics in disfavor of people who actually want to play the game like it is meant instead of exploiting every little unwanted but existing mechanic that exists.

You dear Ashe are a game exploiter that trys to warp reality to suit your needs to further your opinion instead of questioning and trying to understand what is behind other peoples Opinions.

If you simply would say you like the game as it is and you want a simplyfied casual mech shooter style version of MWO and simply put up a poll who likes this too...well go ahead but please stop trying to discredit ppl who just want this game to be more BATTLETECH and less legotech.

Full stop. Lets not confuse the delusion of what you want or think the game should be with the actual product. Then look at the history of the other video games based on Battletech such as MW4 and we clearly see that customized loadouts and certain chassis being better than others is not something new and exclusive to MWO.

You also seem to have zero practical understanding of what an exploit is. Making a decent mech and figuring out what works best is not included as an exploit as it is actually part of the design. It is as intentional in these games as it was in the Grand Turismo franchise. Like it or not, customising and messing around in the garage or mech lab is something developers have found that a whole lot of people love. It is a huge draw and selling feature.

Also the language you are using is basically an accusation and an attack towards Ash and it is not only really uncool, but since it is ripe with insults and asinine assumptions about what or why the thread was created, is against the code of conduct. Calling someone a cheater, or exploiter, minmaxer, or anything else is no where near approaching what is constructive conversation. You are not promoting dialogue here, you are making an attack and even managed to make it personal.

A couple things that I hope comes from this reply are that you edit out the baseless attack on Ash, and that you realise that your opinion on "how the game is meant to be played" is just that, an opinion. The idea that people who are playing meta (at times because I don't know any player that runs only meta all the time) are doing something wrong, is only because you have a strange idea that you and a few others should be able to dictate to others how they play based on what you think. It is absurd if not a special level of ridiculous. This doesn't even broach the fact that in quick play where the majority of the population lives, you can run a whole bunch of stuff that isn't PPFLD meta and do well. There wasn't anything meta about my Bushies when they had the leaderboard challenge and I still managed to come in 5th, 19th, 21st respectively on three chassis and I am a complete potato...

[MischiefSC]

Wow. So much not getting it.

Look, lore mech were intentionally bad. In some cases really so. In TT it wasn't a big deal because weapons had no real synergy and people controlled a lance of mechs and weapons hit rarely and by luck and with random locarions.

None of that works in FPS. None of it. You can't create that in a FPS without having an MMO style mechanic where you lock a target, hit "fire" and it randomly determines hits and locations.

There is nothing that will make stock builds comparable with custom builds. It wasn't in TT, mechs were absolutely not balanced and BV never balanced them.

A build with LRMs, 2 MLs and an AC10 will always be absolutely inferior to a mech with either all long or all close range weapons. Always. They were in TT - with minimal customization I could make a mech vastly superior in TT as well.

Stock builds where everyone is in bad derp mechs is good for a giggle sometimes. There is not something that will work in FW.

[ice trey]

While I agree with the sentiment that The Basilisk puts up

The Basilisk, on 17 February 2017 - 03:55 AM, said:

If someone says "We want stock mechs in a lore environment" this actually means "We want a game where driving lore mechs in a lore environment with lore loadouts work"

I think I'm more in the camp of "I wanted the game to better reflect the Battletech setting". In Battletech, customization was rarely done to "Make my mech better" and only really possible by those with ridiculous amounts of resources at their disposal, like heads of state. More often what we saw were either refit kits, which factories produced in order to change a mech from one variant to another with somewhat less difficulty, or field refits, which were risky but often done out of desperation and frequently didn't go as planned, like changing the facing of a laser, or swapping the LRM5 rack with an SRM4. Customization in general also frequently jacked maintenance costs through the roof. In a universe where - to give real world parallels, mechs represent high-tech as a real world B2 Bomber, and techs at the level of being able to fix a Toyota, the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" mantra is usually in place.

This could have been reflected more effectively had PGI from the start either not included customization, or made customization come with some sort of real cost. By real cost, I'm not talking about MC or C-bills. You use those one time, and they're used up. They're finished. You forget you even paid. I'm talking about permanent decreases on C-bill/XP/LP rewards from a given mech based on the extent of the customization jobs, Even going the route of "Damaged components" wouldn't work unless they became permanently locked to the chassis, and even then, simply going out and buying a new chassis until RNGsus smiles on them is totally in the range of possibility for the more frequent players.

Though there's a lot of players who don't like this sort of idea, the other factor to consider is that the majority of people here are tourists to the setting. Sure, they might have gotten a MW4 disk... for free with some graphics card... and in the span of time between this and mechwarrior 4 put literally no effort into looking into the battletech setting. No sourcebooks or novels; no minis; no games; no clix figures or Tech manuals... but as soon as a mechwarrior game comes out with the cost of "Free" comes out, they start throwing their weight around. The types who couldn't have been arsed if there was going to be a new Battletech-universe game or not. These are the main clients to the game, not the fans. Not the people who've gone out of their way to find the novels, or learn about the factions, or buy the minis, or read the rulebooks. The closest they ever get is a 10 minute peruse of Sarna.net to find out which canon design has the most high hardpoints, never mind the production year.

So, the honest truth is, from the minute that this game was marked "Online", we, the Battletech fans, had already lost. Everything that could have done to have better reflected the lore and mechanics, like an expanding reticule similar to what you see in counterstrike/bloodlines in order to scatter shots better over the whole of the mech and better illustrate the need to manage speed as well as movement, limitations on customization, repair/reload mechanics, maintenance costs, but most of all - STORYLINE, went right out the window. If anything, more and more, PGI have treated the Battletech universe less as the blessing it is that it propped their 3rd rate company up enough to get people to pay attention to them, and more like a curse that is holding them back. Slowly but surely, they've worked towards distancing themselves from it. First with pinpoint aiming, then with coolant flushes, Then the stupid sports-team clan emblems, then mah bukkits, and now the Roughneck.

I've never had a Mechwarrior title that I didn't enjoy playing until this one, but it's a lost cause, really. All that can be said is GG better luck in HBSBT/MW5 and leave this to the e-sport laymen who'll forget about it once the next best thing comes along. Every now and again you want to add some input to maybe make playing the game a not-as-bad experience, but watching MWO peter on is like watching your heroin-addled delinquent child going about it's business - you know it's your baby, but you really wish it wasn't.

MacClearly, on 17 February 2017 - 07:23 AM, said:

Also the language you are using is basically an accusation and an attack towards Ash and it is not only really uncool, but since it is ripe with insults and asinine assumptions about what or why the thread was created, is against the code of conduct. Calling someone a cheater, or exploiter, minmaxer, or anything else is no where near approaching what is constructive conversation. You are not promoting dialogue here, you are making an attack and even managed to make it personal.

This is true, too.
Even in gaming, there will be the powergamers, the roleplayers, the lorehounds and the rules lawyers. In tabletop, most players govern themselves, and canon-only is usually used to help to keep the feel of being a part of the universe they love, as well as to be able to put restrictions on players who may or may not have powergaming tendencies, because Tech Manual is a pandoras' box for munchkins. However, online play, power-gaming isn't a subset of gamer, it's the default. PGI even targeted that market with their raging bone for getting a slice of the e-sport pie.

But picking a player out for it and calling him a powergamer is kind of redundant, besides falling into name-and-shame. Calling a multiplayer gamer a powergamer is like accusing a fish of being able to swim. If anything, I fault PGI for not doing things to dampen the strength of powergaming. I had hoped that there wouldn't be customization in this game and was vocal about it before closed beta for just this reason, but apparently - although this would be a big departure from multiplayer being added as a second-thought to a mechwarrior game to being the only mode in a mechwarrior game - the customization system was seen as an untouchable component of the game, in spite of the nightmare that was MW4 multiplayer - balance be damned.

Likewise, if they are stripping out quirks anyway, at the very least, a Battle Value system of sorts in FP would be possible. Even in tabletop Battletech, an Awesome and a Charger are by no means equal, but when you can choose to field a (Stock) awesome for almost twice the cost of a Charger, things get more interesting. Another example being that you could field an Awesome and Locust together for the same price as a Charger and Hunchback. By taking less popular designs, you should be able to field more. By taking more popular designs, you should be forced to make hard decisions.