Bombast, on 11 October 2017 - 11:33 AM, said:
Honestly, I find none of that compelling. Damage as a 'pure' balance metric is simply a poor choice - It doesn't take into account damage efficiency and it's the most easily gamed stat. It also favors certain weapons that are generally considered poor - For example, my best three damage mechs use the LB-20X (Warhammer), RAC/5 (Bushwacker), and LRMs (Catapult). Could I use that to say that not only are IS mechs superior, but those are the best weapons in the game?
As for ping... come on, man. You know thats a cop out. If you really thought ping was a factor, you'd have to bow out and admit none of your stats are 'admissible.'
Actually my Hunchback IIC(O) runs Dual LB20s and it's one of my best KDR mechs across a large number of games. I also tend to do really well in my Dual LB20 K2 and Warhammer. They're great weapons.
And man, I really figured I explained why Ping matters for LAST HIT KILL but not so much for doing damage in general. Let me break it down for you.
When talking about last hit kills I'm competing with my own team mates. They have at least a 200ms advantage on me. How many ms earlier do they need to hit an enemy mech to get the kill over me? Factoring in average(young male gamer in this case) variance in reaction time, not very much.
Doing damage however, especially in MWO due to how relatively slow most mechs move a 200ms ping makes as close to zero difference as to not matter. Not to mention travel time of many of the weapons. It could matter in hitting the CT instead of the ST for a kill shot but I'm still doing damage.
Now, would I like to have more stats to compare with? Hell yes. I'd love to see KMDD per mech. I'd love to see Component Destructions per mech. How much damage tanked? Definitely. Average Match Score? Sure why not. There are a lot of stats I'd like to have but we don't. All I know is that while there are always temporary imbalances of one or two mechs that are way above the curve, they do get balanced and overall the game is the most balanced MW game we've ever had.
Technically the sheer variation in mechs seen just before a new one gets released into the game in any one match is actually the most proof you need. I see 20 different mechs most matches, and not the 20 most recent, we're talking Catapults, Ravens, Hunchbakcs. Some of the very first mechs released ever. And on top of that I'm seeing UACs, machine guns, lasers, MRMs, SRMs, LRMs, Gauss, PPCs all in one match. Same as my top mechs; there is PPC, Lasers, Gauss, UACs, MRMs, etc. present. I can give you example after example of matches with 20 different mechs but it won't make any difference, you'll always have an excuse.
The balance will never be perfect but blindly drinking the bittervet koolaid means you will never realise that the game is actually well balanced with only ever a temporary handful of outliers. They should always strive to improve balance because again, it's not perfect and it never will be but I think the hate and the indoctrination is too high for some to ever see what the actual state of the balance is. The best part is when they address particularly bad cases of imbalance and those same grumpy bittervets are up in arms about how it's a bad change and how dare they touch my broken OP murderbot (PPC/Gauss, just as the most recent example).
But I digress. I'll enjoy my stable of 200+ IS and Clan murderbots using every weapon (apart from LRMs) available to me to murder all the things.
Because I can.
Edited by ForceUser, 11 October 2017 - 12:18 PM.