655 replies to this topic

[Vexgrave Lars]

Pht, on 28 March 2012 - 06:11 PM, said:

So, basically, you're equating anarchy (everyone does as he pleases) with freedom?

... Or did I read you wrong?

Anarchy is not freedom, that is a terrible misconception and certainly not what I was implying. Anarchy is the lack of continuity between members of a community with no expectation of moderation, in my opinion. I am saying that enabling, not allowing, people to act by choice for continuity and community is the best option. Enforcing any perception on a community leads you to accepting responsibility for an outcome, good or bad as well as its maintenance. Something I would think the devs are really trying to avoid, they probalby do not what to be the geek police day in and day out.

In short there are laws for rational reason, and as long as the laws support growth equitably in the spirit of a community for each individual, and as long those laws enable, rather than prohibit growth and development forward, you will have people that will use those statutes to grow individually and enable the whole community to grow as well.

The current obfuscation about the functions and characteristics of the "MechLab" and what canon rules will apply there-in has been a topic that so many seem concerned about. Frankly I am satisfied that we get one at all. I do not interpret that the Devs are dropping all sense and allowing us to strap a Jenner chassis with 20 one-shot AC/20s to it. However that the Devs are doing exactly what I described above, Within the rules, and per the prior historical information, enabling players to remove the uniform equipment (and even variants) posted in the TRO's and developing new fittings for existing chassis.

Further, the devs seem to be doing the moderate thing, and doing so for all the right reasons as far as I can tell. My concern is that the cry for more as well as the cry for less is irrational in both cases, and I hope that when we get next Dev Interview that all parties are both somewhat excited, and somewhat disappointed in the outcome. To me that means that they did indeed find a moderate point to enable the individuals, and community, without letting anarchy rule.

I must now go shave and spike my mohawk and put on my spring dress.
Your inquiry to my stance is completely rational, did read a little insane at first I suppose.

[Vexgrave Lars]

Katalis, on 29 March 2012 - 08:29 AM, said:

Based off of the table top game rules you could not change out the weapons, armor, or jump jets of innerspere mechs at whim. Field modifications had been developed which is where the variants came from.

Gotta call you on that statement, there are literally hundreds of personalized variants, usually I will concede for the more wealthy and affluent, but to name at least one of the most famous, the bounty hunters marauder, is way far from stock. Again the perception that it cannot be done, gives no sway toward putting resources towards seeing it done. Personalized refits are costly admittedly, but they are totally canon.

[Katalis]

Vexgrave Lars, on 29 March 2012 - 09:12 AM, said:

Gotta call you on that statement, there are literally hundreds of personalized variants, usually I will concede for the more wealthy and affluent, but to name at least one of the most famous, the bounty hunters marauder, is way far from stock. Again the perception that it cannot be done, gives no sway toward putting resources towards seeing it done. Personalized refits are costly admittedly, but they are totally canon.

I never said that it couldn't be done. I said that they couldn't make those changes at whim. In the computer MW games that I have played you could swap weapons out whenever you wanted. This wasn't possible by table top rules. Yes you could make changes, but those changes took time, and they weren't always successful. When the attempted change failed it, would usually have some type of negative impact on game play.

[SD 47]

This post is going to be a long one so feel free to ignore my next post...

After reading through this thread, I think a lot of people are looking at this from a variety of viewpoints causing a lot of conflation. I am going to try and break this discussion down to a very basic level before giving my 2 cents. If what I say seems like an insult to any of you, please don't take it that way, I am just trying to look into things in the most atomic way possible.

First off I am going to define the goals people have mentioned in the thread in terms of "Fun", this is a game after all and we are all playing it to have fun.

A lot of people who are big fans of the BTUniverse, really want to see Mechs that are true to its lore. They want the mechs to be true to their "Standard" Variants because they want to really experience the universe as conceived by its creators. In a standard MMO these people would be drawn to a "RP" server. Segregation is typically bad, but then they don't have to deal with people like me who want to min/max and do things quickly and efficiently not stopping to take part in the lore.

Another thing people have been pointing out is that they really want a high degree of customization. They want the ability to tailor their mech to themselves and don't want to be limited in that regard. I think we can all agree that customization is a fun thing, but it can pose balance issues. That leads me directly into Balance issues, personally I don't feel that any game can stand without good balance. Starcraft is what it is because of fine tuned balance, and there are many a game that degraded to rushing to "the best" build in order to achieve superiority. Its not that these people are "wrong" for wanting to be superior, it is just that the game required them to do this to be competitive. Which finally leads us to Boating, a special type of balance problem that affects MW games. I think the consensus is that boating is bad because it degrades gameplay by making everyone pick a select few weapons. So this lack of variety is no good. Finally boating plays into the Alpha Strike issue. Everyone wants to have fun but part of that is winning, accordingly people build to win. I mean when playing an FPS, who likes dying over and over, that just leads to rage quits. As a result of this, Alpha Strikes result in a high reward, and in previous games little risk. Who doesn't want to have a golden gun? I am breaking alpha strikes out as a separate issue from boating, because you can still core a Jenner by Alpha'ing with a Gauss, 2 Large Lasers and a couple of SRMs.

Since a number of people have suggested leaving it in the devs hands, or increasing the wait time for full customization, I will add waiting to the list. I am also going to add new features to this list, as it conflicts with something that I will mention below.

Summary:

• Accurate according to Lore --> More is more fun.
  
• Customization --> More is more fun.
  
• Balance --> More is more fun.
  
• Variety --> More is more fun.
  
• Features --> More is more fun.
  
• Boating --> Less is more fun.
  
• One Shot Alpha --> Less is more fun.
  
• Waiting for something --> Less is more fun.

​So we want a solution that allows customization that is "accurate to lore" but is balanced and promotes a variety of weapons and mechs, all while reducing the prominence of Boats and Coring Alphas. Though looking at these goals, most seem to be in conflict. Customization allows for boats and one shot alphas, reducing the variety. Reducing the customization just means that everyone will select around the most popular available mechs, it does not prevent one shot alphas, but it stays true to the lore. However, if your penalty is to make the player wait to customize, you give people with more play time an added advantage beyond skill. These people can spend the time needed to work through a full customization, or earn the C-Bills required for it, leaving the rest of the population in the dust. If the devs are in charge of picking well balanced customizations that poses two issues:

• We have to wait for new variants to be tested and approved (your favorite variant might be very low priority)
  
• Dev time is taken from introducing new features (A new map of a low gravity moon, or an altogether new Chassis)

Recognizing that there is no Silver Bullet to the problem (someone let the devs know if you find one), I think the best way to go about looking at this problem is to try and break each goal apart and treat them as completely separate issues.


BUT before we jump into how to solve these issues, what levers do the devs have at their disposal. I only have a few ideas based upon my time playing MW2, MW3, and MW4 so those of you with more experience with TT rules please feel free to add to this list of parameters.

• Cost (In C-Bills)
  
• Time (In-game/Real)
  
• Availability (Unlocks either by "Earning" or Salvage)
  
• Tonnage
  
• Critical Slots
  
• Hardpoints
  
• Time to Live
  
• Damage effects
  
• Maps
  
• Heat
  
• TT rules I am not aware of (People have been mentioning things like failed upgrades)
  
• New Gameplay Mechanics (This is going to be new, so we don't have to restrict ourselves to what has been done)

Also most, if not all, of these variables can be employed in two different ways: Predictable, Random. Example (a bad one): Ammo Randomly Explodes. Random effects are "bad" in that players tend to loath the random punishments that they get (we would have won that battle if only I didn't get randomly crit) and jealous of people with random boosts (I was really pissed at all those Salarian Infiltrators in ME3 because I wanted one real bad and couldn't seem to get him). So in general random is something that you don't want to do, unless you want to annoy people.


Each of these has their own pluses and minuses, since this isn't the Third Trieste or a Thesis, I will stop babbling and move on.

Moving on to the suggestions section...

1) Maximizing Customization

• Seems easy, since customization is good, more customization is more good. Put a full MechLab in place for those who want it. If you are the type of person to fine tune everything right down to which type of Medium Lasor you are putting in that Catapult.
  
• Added Bonuses: No need to wait on the devs to build your variant, you can just make it happen.
  
• Conflicts: You will get some non lore specific variants, potentially boats, and min/maxers will go for the One Shot.

2) Maximizing Balance

• This is one of those things that will always hit the fan when we get our grubby hands on it. Look at WOW, people have written a variety of simulators with the single purpose of boosting their performance by .00001%. Given that we are not playing 1v1 with identical mechs, we also have the added problem of combinations. Look at Priest/Mage/Rogue in wow arenas.
  
• Best way to maximize this is to increase the number of independent levers you have to pull and give the devs time to pull them. Also remember that this could just be your perception, just because you keep dying to PPC barrages, doesn't mean that PPCs are OP, you might need to adjust your play style to use more cover.
  
• This is one of those things that I think should be left in Dev hands. With a well designed program you can monitor what people are doing and make tweaks from there.

3) Boating

Since this is a balance issue I am going to suggest that we create new independent gameplay mechanisms to help control for boating (the following are my suggestions):

• Laser Boat (Hardware degradation): If you have too many lasers you run the risk of overloading your internal hardware due to power draw. This could be felt in that lasers will lose effectiveness (you just melted your optics so you lost 50% of your firepower) and/or reduced engine effectiveness.
  
• PPC Boat (Magnet Quenching): When using too many PPCs, you run the risk of Quenching the Magnet containing the plasma. Resulting in an effect similar to an ammo explosion.
  
• Autocannon Boat (Recoil): Due to the recoil caused by firing too many autocannons, your gyro might not be able to keep up resulting in either falling over, or losing Gyro Calibration (a damaged gyro).
  
• Missile Boat (Premature Detonation Chaining): Due to unstable warheads, missiles might chain detonate. This could be caused by an AMS or just by virtue of one missile striking something. Imagine losing 5 missiles out of your LRM 20 volley due to an AMS, but 15 out of two Simultaneously Fired LRM 20 volleys.

Personally I like these types of mechanisms because they can be independently adjusted globally (to reduce the overall effectiveness of a weapon type) but also on a chassis by chassis basis to allow for stock variations that are effectively boats (read supernova). They are not intended to be a panacea, nor do they combat insta-kill alphas; these suggestions are just meant to be ideas for reducing the likelihood that builds will rely on too many of one type of weapon.

Another option is to increase time to live. Most boats are built around all weapons focusing at a specific range. By increasing Time to Live, more mechs can recognize the danger they are in and move to a non-optimal range. That doesn't mean that they will avoid damage, but it means that you can still kill a boat by relying on your more balanced design.

4) One Shot Alpha

This is a big one. Lore wise, alphas are high risk high reward but they have never been implemented well enough that one can avoid people doing nothing but attempting to core with alphas. Off the top of my head I can think of 3 ideas for how to limit the use of Alphas without removing them:

• Heat: When you alpha, you suddenly require a lot more power from your engine just to power the weapons. This produces a lot of waste heat that either: doesn't dissipate quickly because it is contained in your core, or requires that you shutdown for an extended period of time (a minute or more for example to allow that Jenner that you missed to really pick at your Atlas).
  
• Time: Limit how often you can use your alpha through a Capacitor bank or something. Your drawing peak power from your engine, it might need to charge up after performing an alpha.
  
• Core Damage: Since you are drawing peak energy, you might damage your core causing your top speed to be reduced, added heat, and maybe even reduced weapon effectiveness.

Again increasing Time To Live reduces the effectiveness of an alpha. If you want to dissuade people from Using one, if it is unlikely that you will die to a single alpha, they will avoid using it because you might be able to deal serious damage while they wait for recharging/reloading weapons or shutdowns.

5) Variety

It is the spice of life, but any game with archetypes inevitably falls into the trap where people will pick combinations that seem to work well, avoiding others. If everyone determines that fire support is the best way to go, all battles will be pitched conflicts between a small number of scout mechs with NARCs and Catapults flinging LRMs around. This is going to be a balance issue left to the devs. Fortunately they can do things like adjusting reload times and heat, to help reduce the effectiveness of any one combination. However that doesn't mean that your personal choice will be "good".

6) New Features

Since we want the devs to give us loads of these, best that they either prevent us from tinkering with mechanics, or give us full control. Anything in the middle takes time away from them to be spent on adding in new content.

7) Lore Accuracy

The easy controls seem to be based around tonnage restraints, critical slots and other hard points. That said, many have pointed out that there are known catapult variants that don't include those signature LRMs. I can see two compromises on this: Use hard points and variations effectively, or Segregate the population.

You can purchase two chief variations of the catapult, one that only allows for missile racks and one that only allows for PPCs or ACs of some kind. This system is similar to the one adopted my MW:LL for customization, you don’t restrict customization completely but you do require that some variants carry similar weapons.

On the other hand, if you segregate things into "Fully Customizable" and "Variations Only" you can pick and choose which you want to play in (and are eligible for).

Personally, fun > lore. So I will take full customization over any lore aspects. But in the interest of tryin to make everyone happy those are some other options.


Sorry for no TL:DR summary for this one. Its one of those things where both God and the Devil are in the details IMO. Though I would love to see more discussion on the issue.

Edited by SD 47, 31 March 2012 - 02:47 PM.

[Erik Hollister]

First off, I enjoyed reading SD 47s post. A lot of good ideas there.

I'm not certain how the player will be first introduced to the "world", but having a bone-stock mech makes the most sense to me. A new mechwarrior doesn't even have a choice what he/she will be piloting... I assume there will be a number of introductory missions that will give the player a feel for the different mechs/weapons systems before they are "assigned" their own. I'd like to see the player be able to choose a size (light/med/heavy) and be randomly given a stock mech from that size grouping.

Customization should be allowed... players want to be able to build up their avatar (in this case their warrior and their mech). It should be limited, however. One way to encourage not straying too far from the stock-mech concept may be to make the customization very costly AND time consuming, both in initial customization and any recustomization and repair in the future. To make this realistic, tech crews are used to repairing stock designs and have the parts readily available to do the job. Customized mechs require specialized parts (servos, linkages, etc..), non-typical armor forms ("Sure, we have armor to form around a Warhammers PPCs, but yours sports AC20s. We have to custom form that...), non-typical weaponry, etc. Those parts don't come easy, or cheaply. Not to mention the learning curve of the techs. Take a certified Ford mechanic and plunk a broken, tricked out monster truck in front of him. Sure, he can fix it eventually, but he's going to have to figure it out as he goes... takes time.

SO... long story short, if a player wants to invest in customizing his/her mech, let them. Make it expensive and time consuming (ie. your mech will be ready in x amount of REAL time).

[OnLashoc]

Katalis, on 29 March 2012 - 08:29 AM, said:

Based off of the table top game rules you could not change out the weapons, armor, or jump jets... No need to quote further.

MWO does not = Table Top.

This is a game meant to be played by not only MW fans, but gamers. So can we please quit assuming everyone here is a table top player or even cares what the table top rules were and how it should effect MWO???

I love FPS's, I love RTS's, MMORPG's, and didn't like MechAssault, but have played MW4 for 13 years and still play to this day.

Does that mean we should base the game off MW4 completely? Umm no. But does that mean we should throw it out the window either? Umm no. I am not saying we should throw TT rules and sources out, but damn if we haven't seen enough post throwing around TT rules left and right already?

Again this thing is meant to make money as well, so there has to be a balance. You TT fan guys just go overboard with TT this and that it's very irritating.

*Steps off soap box*

Edited by OnLashoc, 31 March 2012 - 03:41 PM.

[Sir Ollie]

Personally i don't want either, Innersphere mechs should be one of the variants that are in the various tech manuals, Omni's if your a Clanner, would be customizable to some degree.

[GrimFist]

I like the thought of customization but only so far. For example, perhaps you cant remove the primary weapons platforms. Minor tweaks such as removing medium lasers to put a flamer. Upgraded a ppc to an ERPPC at some point in the future would be fine by me. Replacing heat sinks with double heat sinks as they become available is cool.

I agree with the mechwarrior that posted. No frakenstein mechs. I want the chassis to stay true to their form. At the same time I would want to see if somebody had machine guns vs. lasers installed, AC vs. LRMS and so on.


Some folks did modify mechs and most of them were promptly shot to hell.



Semper Fi - Keep the spirit of BT, I've been pretty happy with what I've seen so far. I trust what I say here will have little impact. I give me 2 cents anyway.

Grim

[Javelin156]

OnLashoc, on 31 March 2012 - 03:36 PM, said:

MWO does not = Table Top.

This is a game meant to be played by not only MW fans, but gamers. So can we please quit assuming everyone here is a table top player or even cares what the table top rules were and how it should effect MWO???

I love FPS's, I love RTS's, MMORPG's, and didn't like MechAssault, but have played MW4 for 13 years and still play to this day.

Does that mean we should base the game off MW4 completely? Umm no. But does that mean we should throw it out the window either? Umm no. I am not saying we should throw TT rules and sources out, but damn if we haven't seen enough post throwing around TT rules left and right already?

Again this thing is meant to make money as well, so there has to be a balance. You TT fan guys just go overboard with TT this and that it's very irritating.

*Steps off soap box*

Hey the table top people are just freaking because there hasn't been a real mechwarrior simulation since mw3. Mechwarrior 4 was fun for what it was but was more like an arcade shooter. It wasn't much better than mech assault for the x box. The frankenstein mech problem shouldn't be an issue if everything is priced correctly in game.

Edited by Javelin156, 09 April 2012 - 09:07 AM.

[AlanEsh]

Javelin156, on 09 April 2012 - 09:05 AM, said:

The frankenstein mech problem shouldn't be an issue if everything is priced correctly in game.

Nah, people will grind their faces off to get that "best mech setup" and then dominate. Pricing will only delay that.

[Javelin156]

Angelicon, on 09 April 2012 - 10:42 AM, said:

Nah, people will grind their faces off to get that "best mech setup" and then dominate. Pricing will only delay that.

Shouldn't that be allowed though? This is an MMO isn't it?

[Vexgrave Lars]

SD 47 IS Epic Cool!!

[Soule]

Katalis, on 30 March 2012 - 03:35 PM, said:

I never said that it couldn't be done. I said that they couldn't make those changes at whim. In the computer MW games that I have played you could swap weapons out whenever you wanted. This wasn't possible by table top rules. Yes you could make changes, but those changes took time, and they weren't always successful. When the attempted change failed it, would usually have some type of negative impact on game play.

I remember playing MW2 and seeing all the goodies come up in "enconomy enabled" and not have anywhere near the money to make the changes I wanted, this is not multyplayer this is a persisntant online game, money will count.

GrimFist, on 31 March 2012 - 04:42 PM, said:

Semper Fi - Keep the spirit of BT, I've been pretty happy with what I've seen so far. I trust what I say here will have little impact. I give me 2 cents anyway.

Grim

Devil you speak true.

[AlanEsh]

Javelin156, on 09 April 2012 - 10:48 AM, said:

Angelicon, on 09 April 2012 - 10:42 AM, said:

Nah, people will grind their faces off to get that "best mech setup" and then dominate. Pricing will only delay that.

Shouldn't that be allowed though? This is an MMO isn't it?

No, it actually isn't an MMO, even according to the devs.

As to should it be allowed... that depends on what you mean by frankenmech. If you mean non-canon, ok sure that should be fine. But if you mean "mech chassis and config that dominates all others" then no it should not be allowed.

We're not leveling mechs like leveling a character to 70 in WoW.

[MaddMaxx]

It all boils down to "Balance". If any game, no matter the genre, does not Balance the differing elements that the player have at their disposal, then FUN goes South and only the hardest of the "hard core" will find it enjoyable.

I suspect that when only the "hard core" are left playing, then any future profitability, also goes South.

[Grus]

Adridos, on 17 December 2011 - 02:50 AM, said:

You know it is meant as the fact you could put 100 lasers on a mech, that did not have even one lore-wise.

Case in point. MW3 i had a Shadowcat that had 7 ER-small lasers, max armor, max speed, MASC, AMS, ECM. assalt mechs feared me for the speed and the fact that after i got behind them it was GG. never failed they maxed the front armor and the rear plate was tinfoil...

[Ragotag]

MaddMaxx, on 10 April 2012 - 07:25 AM, said:

It all boils down to "Balance". If any game, no matter the genre, does not Balance the differing elements that the player have at their disposal, then FUN goes South and only the hardest of the "hard core" will find it enjoyable.

I suspect that when only the "hard core" are left playing, then any future profitability, also goes South.

I guess that all depends on your context and definition of "Balance". In the past decade, especially the past five years, the gaming industry seems to have interpreted "Balance" as "instant satisfaction for all"; this only makes games that end up with a very short player shelf-life and only provides further incentives to developers to wash and repeat old formulas with new packaging for a quick $. I really hope MWO does not progress down that route because I'd like to be playing it for years -- not months.

[Red Beard]

From what I can tell, the mechlab has been added to the game, in it's current form, in order to appease the hardcore fans, and to attract the RPG element. A real gamer has no use for something like this. Fiddling around with your mech is not PLAYING the game. There are NO loadouts that players will create that will prove to be any better than what will be presented in stock variant form. Argue all you want. Argue till your face is blue, but that will not make you right. This game is MechWARRIOR, not MechENGINEER, and so I say again, the mechlab is useless to real video gamers. All the time you spend jimmy-jacking around with a custom loadout will only prove that you prefer the "fiddling" instead of the fighting.

[Ragotag]

Red Beard, on 10 April 2012 - 08:03 AM, said:

From what I can tell, the mechlab has been added to the game, in it's current form, in order to appease the hardcore fans, and to attract the RPG element. A real gamer has no use for something like this. Fiddling around with your mech is not PLAYING the game. There are NO loadouts that players will create that will prove to be any better than what will be presented in stock variant form. Argue all you want. Argue till your face is blue, but that will not make you right. This game is MechWARRIOR, not MechENGINEER, and so I say again, the mechlab is useless to real video gamers. All the time you spend jimmy-jacking around with a custom loadout will only prove that you prefer the "fiddling" instead of the fighting.

While I may be willing to agree with the spirit of your post, one thing that the mech-lab does allow for is the simulation of after-battle repairs. Don't have any more replacement Large Lasers for the one that you just lost, not enough C-Bills to buy a replacement -- swap in a Medium Laser and up your armor a bit for the next battle. For me it's less of a "fiddling" tool and more of a "weapon's platform management" tool -- so long as it is limited in the amount of feasible customization. The simple fact -- if you don't fight then you don't earn C-Bills for repairs and new equipment; unless of course the cash store get's you around that issue.

Edited by Ragotag, 10 April 2012 - 08:16 AM.

[MaddMaxx]

Ragotag, on 10 April 2012 - 07:48 AM, said:

I guess that all depends on your context and definition of "Balance". In the past decade, especially the past five years, the gaming industry seems to have interpreted "Balance" as "instant satisfaction for all"; this only makes games that end up with a very short player shelf-life and only provides further incentives to developers to wash and repeat old formulas with new packaging for a quick $. I really hope MWO does not progress down that route because I'd like to be playing it for years -- not months.

Well I would more attribute it to very short production cycles that in turn provide in sufficient testing times, either in Alpha or Beta, in order to get to retail, with an assumption that any "balance" issue can be resolved via Patching. Sadly more often than not, what you state

Quote

"this only makes games that end up with a very short player shelf-life and only provides further incentives to developers to wash and repeat old formulas with new packaging for a quick $."

is what results. The bigger issues and is way OT here is why gamers have consistently put up with it of the last 1/2 decade or more.