Eindridi, on 20 February 2018 - 11:50 PM, said:
He isn't complaining about people who are 300 games into MWO, the "problem" players in this case are probably 10,000+ games in. They aren't stuck with bad builds, but the laziness of MWO development has fostered a legion of players who are only capable of farming stats by putting a bunch of damage on 1 button and into a chassis that only has to expose 10% to fire. Once the fight gets chaotic, the back line farmers in the Skillbringers and Easy Jags got scared and fell apart.
Personally I do think a 6 month PSR reset would be good for the game. Most vets will start mid way thru t3 during the bonus period, and those that play a ton or get great scores would end up t1 quickly while most settled in somewhere in t2. The other end would probably end up spread across t4 and t3, and who knows, maybe games would be better.
But ultimately, it would probably not change anything, as PGI continues to sell improved performance to the masses without tying it to any kind of mechanical skill or resource management.
But with the player population as small as it is, even if those players weren't technically in Tier1 (let's say it became some kind of zero-sum thing and they get put in Tier3), the matchmaker would
still have to open the valves and put those same people in the same games anyway.
Ultimately the root of the problem is the low player population.
I've stated what I believe are major factors which contribute to the low player population, and why I believe that balancing the game is important to solve that.
Even aside from McMechN00bs, if we're talking long-time players who prefer a particular playstyle that happens to be gimped, you're likely to see those guys eventually get sick of getting dunked on and quitting also.
The very best players purely invested in raw performance will adapt to any particular style as required in order to win. That's more of a Miyamoto Musashi kind of philosophy (master all weapons, don't fall in love with a particular style, use what is effective in a given circumstance to win... which sometimes meant using a gun! That's right, one of the most famous swordsmen of all time advocated using a gun if the situation called for it.).
But a lot of players are more casual and tend to stick to a particular style they prefer, whether that be brawling, sniping, dakka, etc. Then, as the nerf bats swings round and round, pasting each style in turn, you end up pissing off basically every "demographic" of player, one demographic after another, and there are people who quit the game and never really came back as a result.
Remember the 1.5 damage SRMs? I do. I have a friend who played Counterstrike competitively (so, not a potato), whose preferred style of fighting was close-range (he always played melee classes in MMOs). He frakkin quit MWO when SRMs got nerfed to 1.5 damage and never looked back since.
Edited by YueFei, 21 February 2018 - 12:24 AM.
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