66 replies to this topic

[Tlords]

Hey all,

I saw the Dane's video on balance for MWO. Because of this, I am curious of your thoughts on Balance.

So rub that lamp - and pick your three wishes.

Wish 1 - Tone down laser vomit
Ghost heat now starts at 40 damage for all lasers (with exception for micro lasers). So no more 2 Clan Heavy Large Lasers and 4 ER-Medium lasers 64 damage alpha strikes) No more 2 Clan Large Pulse laser + 6 ER medium laser alphas (68 damage).

Wish 2- Equalize the Survival Skill tree
% for structure and armor become equal across all weight classes. This gives an Atlas the same % bonus as the locust per skill point.

Wish 3 - Mixed weapon load-outs become the norm, not the exception.

[Relishcakes]

For lack of a better way of putting it. Separate but equal.
The Clans have massive laser vomit and its really effective.
The IS has better AC tech so why not work that toward the equivalent of the clans? end up with dakka vomit as the answer to clan laser vomit.

Changing up the trees a bit. Its a little weird to see the same **** on each tree for each class of mech.

Support roles. I dont think i should have to explain that one.

[FupDup]

Tlords, on 28 January 2018 - 07:48 PM, said:

Wish 2- Equalize the Survival Skill tree
% for structure and armor become equal across all weight classes. This gives an Atlas the same % bonus as the locust per skill point.

The issue with this is that, depending on which values you choose, you will either make Survival tree completely useless for lights or completely overpowered for larger mechs. The reason for this is because percentage values give the highest benefit to things that have high base values, and minimal benefit to things with low base values. The lights HAVE to have a higher % because their base armor/structure are so damn low.

Let's look at the most extreme example and assume we give 100-tonners the same bonuses as 20-tonners currently get. Currently the 20-tonner is 26%/41% for armor/structure and the 100-tonner is 10%/25%.

Maths:
Current Unquirked 20-tonner
Base armor: 138 (max)
Base structure: 78
Skilled up armor: 173.88 (+35.88)
Skilled up structure: 109.88 (+31.98)

Current Unquirked 100-tonner
Base armor: 614 (max)
Base structure: 313
Skilled up armor: 675.40 (+61.40)
Skilled up structure: 391.25 (+78.25)

Let's make some hypotheticals now.

Unquirked 20-tonner with 10%/25% bonuses
Base armor: 138 (max)
Base structure: 78
Skilled up armor: 151.80 (+13.80)
Skilled up structure: 98.28 (+20.28)

Unquirked 100-tonner with 26%/41% bonuses
Base armor: 614 (max)
Base structure: 313
Skilled up armor: 773.64 (+159.64)
Skilled up structure: 441.33 (+128.33)

That should pretty clearly demonstrate that equalizing the survival tree across all mechs would end up shafting somebody regardless of whether you set the bar at the top or at the bottom.

Now consider that the big mechs are going to generally have much stronger structure/armor quirks in general, and thus this will further increase the bonus they get from the skill tree (an Annihilator would be absolutely insane with those 26/41 bonuses above dear god).

[Tlords]

Relishcakes, on 28 January 2018 - 07:51 PM, said:

Changing up the trees a bit. Its a little weird to see the same **** on each tree for each class of mech.

Wow - I love that idea. I'm changing my third wish.

Wish #3 - Unique roles in the skill
This would be extra nodes deeper in the skill tree. Nodes that only open when you select which role you want your mech to take. The nodes should be expensive and provide significant benefits, warranting deeper investment in the trees.

Here are some role examples:

• Juggernaut - A defensive guru - Additional nodes for survivability
  
• Glass cannon - The king of projecting firepower - Additional nodes for firepower, removed access to survivability tree
  
• Jack of all trades - 20 free extra skill points to spend in current tree structure
  
• Scout - For those craving speed above all else - Huge mobility bonuses, minimal investment allowed in survivability and firepower.
  
• Harasser - Extra nodes in mobility, firepower

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

1 - Specific: Increase LB-AC damage-per-pellet. Start between 1.2 and 1.5 somewhere and iterate based on performance metrics.

2 - Overhaul: Change the way engine types work. Remove ST death entirely. Have non-XL engines give durability benefits significant enough to outweigh (badum-pish) the weight costs for using them.

3 - Heat Rework: Put a fixed cap on heat capacity and radically boost all heat sink dissipation rates. Increase weapon cooldowns across the board by around 50%. Boating is still possible, but only if you volley fire or are prepared to suffer the consequences of overheating.

[Y E O N N E]

Relishcakes, on 28 January 2018 - 07:51 PM, said:

For lack of a better way of putting it. Separate but equal.
The Clans have massive laser vomit and its really effective.
The IS has better AC tech so why not work that toward the equivalent of the clans? end up with dakka vomit as the answer to clan laser vomit.

Changing up the trees a bit. Its a little weird to see the same **** on each tree for each class of mech.

Support roles. I dont think i should have to explain that one.

You can't do this because both sides have 'Mechs focused on the things that you are saying each respective faction should be deficient at. What are we supposed to do with those? Trash heap?

[Cy Mitchell]

1. Revert the damn UAC jam chance increase and jam duration increase so that the things are not useless for anything besides ballistic boats. Implement a Ghost Jam mechanic that increases the jam rates of boated UACs. That is what should have been done to control the KDK-3, Night Gyr and other UAC boats and it would not have killed the weapon for everyone else which forced everyone into Laser Vomit. Making weapons not fire for longer periods of time is never fun.

2.Address Laser Vomit. Revert the medium laser duration and cooldown increases for both Clan and IS. Again, making weapons not fire for longer periods of time is never fun. Leave the IS lasers alone then and lower the damage of Clan erML to 6. Revert the range of cerML back to 660 or 740m if they synergize too well. Lower the damage of Heavy Large laser to 15. Lower the damage of Heavy Medium laser to 8. Clan Laser Vomit was already strong enough prior to Civil War but the Heavy class of lasers have pushed it way over the top and made it the go to weapon system.

3. Lower the number of Skill Tree nodes to 45-50. Give higher enhancement amounts to each node to make acquiring a node feel like more of a benefit to Mech performance. Raise the cost per node if necessary. Similar to Light Mechs getting a higher percentage for investing in an armor or structure node, make Assaults and Heavies get a higher percentage for investing in mobility nodes. Currently Speed Tweak and other agility nodes based on percentage give very little return to Mechs that already are slow and have poor agility.

Edited by Rampage, 28 January 2018 - 08:33 PM.

[Relishcakes]

Yeonne Greene, on 28 January 2018 - 08:15 PM, said:

You can't do this because both sides have 'Mechs focused on the things that you are saying each respective faction should be deficient at. What are we supposed to do with those? Trash heap?

They pretty much already are...from what i have seen.

[Tlords]

FupDup, on 28 January 2018 - 08:02 PM, said:

The issue with this is that, depending on which values you choose, you will either make Survival tree completely useless for lights or completely overpowered for larger mechs. The reason for this is because percentage values give the highest benefit to things that have high base values, and minimal benefit to things with low base values. The lights HAVE to have a higher % because their base armor/structure are so damn low.

Using this logic, the mobility tree for assaults should get similar bonuses as the survival tree for lights. Today, a locust gets 1/2 the armor bonus of an Atlas. Thus, atlas should get 2x's the bonuses in the mobility tree as a locust.

Personally, I don't think that makes sense either. Better to have an Atlas, which is easy to hit because of its huge size and slow speed, get similar armor bonuses as a locust, percentage wise. It is 5x's the mass, it should be able to carry 5x additional armor.

Edited by Tlords, 28 January 2018 - 08:27 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Relishcakes, on 28 January 2018 - 08:22 PM, said:

They pretty much already are...from what i have seen.

And that's not acceptable.

[Fleeb the Mad]

1) Map edits. Map edits first and foremost. First to add more paths of approach and/or cover in map dead zones to make gameplay more fluid on maps like Frozen City. Second to fix some of the more unbalanced map features such as the citadel in River City. Or...to eliminate certain dominant central terrain features entirely. I think much of the present meta dominance would change if there was more freedom of movement.

2) Limit consumables to one of each type and require mechs using them to actually carry physical hardware such as coolant pods and TAG. Of all the things in this game, the one thing that makes me legitimately angry is the something for nothing nature of consumables and the fact they're spammed with reckless abandon. Remove damage caused by artillery and airstrikes from player totals, too. It's a support function, let it be treated as such.

3) Normalize the survival tree. I'm cool with assault mechs being ponderous, but they badly need to be more durable to make up for it. The mobility tree offers little solace for mechs with bad base values.

[Khobai]

8v8 quickplay

skill tree revamp that divides mechs into roles and has unique skill trees for each role

revamped energy draw to replace ghost heat



energy draw isnt ideal but its still better than all the other alternatives people have suggested like cone of fire or an oppressive heat cap.

Edited by Khobai, 28 January 2018 - 08:33 PM.

[FupDup]

Tlords, on 28 January 2018 - 08:24 PM, said:

Using this logic, the mobility tree for assaults should get similar bonuses as the survival tree for lights. Today, a locust gets 1/2 the armor bonus of an Atlas. Thus, atlas should get 2x's the bonuses in the mobility tree as a locust.

Yes, that would be true. The exact numbers have to be figured out, but in general it would make sense for big gundams to get a higher mobility tree percentage such that it's not useless for them.

Tlords, on 28 January 2018 - 08:24 PM, said:

Personally, I don't think that makes sense either. Better to have an Atlas, which is easy to hit because of its huge size and slow speed, get similar armor bonuses as a locust, percentage wise. It is 5x's the mass, it should be able to carry 5x additional armor.

Not even the stock values for armor scale perfectly linear like that, and don't forget all of the extra firepower you're getting on top of that armor. As a reminder, you're already getting much stronger quirk bonuses and thus the skill tree will stack with these and amplify them.

[Khobai]

Quote

Yes, that would be true. The exact numbers have to be figured out, but in general it would make sense for big gundams to get a higher mobility tree percentage such that it's not useless for them.

They should just give all mechs mobility skills for free like they used to get before the skill tree. mechs move like garbage trucks now and nobody likes it.

no assault is going to take mobility skills even if you buff them. mobility tree consumes too many skill points for too little gain.

it makes more sense to get rid of the silly generic skill tree and have role based skill trees that actually promote diversity and differentiate mechs.

Edited by Khobai, 28 January 2018 - 08:43 PM.

[NRP]

My wish is they forget about balance. Attempts to balance this game have nearly ruined it.

[FupDup]

Khobai, on 28 January 2018 - 08:37 PM, said:

It would make more sense just to give all mechs mobility skills for free like they used to get before the skill tree.

Then have role based skill trees

Mobility is a part of your role though.

Khobai, on 28 January 2018 - 08:37 PM, said:

no assault is going to take mobility skills even if you buff them. mobility tree consumes too many skill points for too little gain.

The little gain can be fixed with higher values.

Edited by FupDup, 28 January 2018 - 08:43 PM.

[El Bandito]

Three wishes?

1. I'm appointed as balance director.

2. Paul won't meddle in my affairs.

3. Don't need the third.

[Trenchbird]

NRP, on 28 January 2018 - 08:38 PM, said:

My wish is they forget about balance. Attempts to balance this game have nearly ruined it.

That doesn't solve anything one way or the other. That said, with a few standouts, the community always disagrees with itself; So listening to us can prove a daunting task, to be sure.

EDIT; Also, it's still funny to me that some of the basic problems - barring some lunatics, mostly "Clan Crocodile Tears" types - are pretty well-agreed upon by the community. It's just that the way of fixing said issues is hotly debated. Perhaps having an adjustment system for custom lobbies would be a great idea; Allowing lobbies to use custom weapon settings-both for jokes, and for some potential balance testing-would be a good step.

Edited by Catten Hart, 28 January 2018 - 09:17 PM.

[Hobbles v]

More balance issues come from the steep learning curve that the actual tech differences.

1. Turn all stock builds into mechs that are ready to used out of the box. Dont need to be meta. Just needs focus. Not a mech with a ppc 2 small lasers 1 medium laser and an lrm 15 with 1 ton of ammo sporting a super slow standard engine and 70% armour. Give new players a better starting point instead of useless builds.

2. Shrink the skill tree. Increase individual node impacts and lower the number of nodes. Lower skill points amounts to scale with lower node count. Also buff sensor tree and mobility tree.

3. Bring back some agiloty to the game. Engine desync slowed down the game overall. Rescale the base agility values starting from the smaller mechs. Keep lights the the same for the most part. Have the agility scale downward more gradually as mechs get bigger. As it currently stands a typical jenner in terms of accelleration is about 5 to 6 times more agile than a kodiak, Despite being just over a third the weight. Keep Jenners at thier current 52 to 63 acceleration but bump up 100 tonners to be 1/3rd as agile (aka in the 16-20 acceleration range instead of 6.19) scale everything in between match.

[sceii]

1) More torso turning speed for all mechs. (it's okay for mech to accelerate or turn slowly, but it's not okay to torso twist slowly)
2) Laservomit issue
Do not change laservomit. just reduce heat for UAC both clan and IS for a little bit, reduce jam chances on uac a little bit. tighten srm apread a little bit, at least in a form of better artemis.
Buff heat efficiency of is and c spl and micro lasers. Go for this thing less energy range=more heat efficiency.
Increase LRM velocity a little bit (like 10-20%) to make up for much more powerful AMS.
Icrease ghostheat on ppc and gauss to 3.
With this changes laservomit will still stay strong poking solution, competeng with doalgauss/ppc
But also increased sustainability gives ballistic builds more punch before oberheating, so they'll be better for sustained damage in range and better for fighting laservomit mechs close up, just as srm mechs.
Boom, we have more valid playstyles then just poking with laservomit.
3)Change linked ghost heat, so it goes to maximum in a pack, not minimum.
for example is you use 2PPC(2 ghost heat) and a light ppc(3 ghost heat) you will trigger GH. Make them fire without GH. Same goes for lasers, link lages and meds, give them 6 GH, so 6meds does not trigger GH, or 4meds and 2 larges does not trigger GH. but 4 is larges trigger GH.