47 replies to this topic

[mistlynx4life]

Different players define fun differently, which means 'winning' doesn't always look the same for everyone. The problem isn't boating, the problem is PGI hasn't finished the game. As long as there's a chance for the folks who aren't winning (defined subjectively, of course, but predominantly this means dealing lots of damage efficiently) against the folks who are winning to complain and hope for change, for whatever reason, you'll never see it go away. Thus the game is perpetually unbalanced.

Remember those people who played Goldeneye with the sniper rifles and could just slay in multiplayer? Imagine what would have happened if Nintendo/Rare had been like "Well, we're always paying attention to numbers and adjusting things accordingly but we won't be sharing those numbers with players." You'd have had thousands of players crying about how overpowered the sniper rifles were and how there should be sniper rifle nerfs or anti-sniper armor or a limit to how many times a player could kill consecutively with the sniper rifle. Then Nintendo/Rare, after months of silence, releases an updated cartridge where the throwing knives have slightly increased accuracy, the Klob had reduced magazine capacity, and some of the maps had been slightly changed. Many of the players would be confused but the hope was there for change so they'd cry even harder about sniper rifles and Nintendo/Rare would assure them that they were continuing to monitor the numbers.

Of course, that's not what Nintendo/Rare did. They said: "Here's a game with your new system - enjoy!" and we all lived with the result. PGI needs to do the same. It's basic parenting.

[Signal27]

razenWing, on 13 May 2018 - 04:26 AM, said:

I think PGI in he latest patch realized how silly it was to conform so closely to lore, because the basic game design does not simulate an accurate representation of lore situation anyways. So the way around it is really to think outside the box and focus on making a fun game first and foremost, than to make a fanboy jerk off program.

And the funny thing is that even the guy who invented BatteTech, Jordan Weisman, fully realizes this - as evidenced by the most recent BattleTech turn-based game that's been released. The way mechs and their weapons work in that game are different in a lot of ways than the original tabletop game, although they are at least similar in spirit and concept. And frankly, that's the attitude PGI should have adopted since day 1 instead of ever feeling obligated to stick as closely and rigidly to the tabletop wargame's numbers as closely as possible.

Edited by Signal27, 13 May 2018 - 02:58 PM.

[Mortalcoil]

It would be really really really easy for PGI to ruin boating, but the TT purists (read: people who want to remain overpowered) would complain as they always do, so PGI's hands are tied.

[Naelbis]

Boating isn't really the problem..convergence is. But PGI will never touch their pinpoint convergence system (they don't have the coding ability) and the FPS wannabees would flip their lid if they had to play with a Planetside style "hit somewhere in the circle" system. Game would be a lot different if you had to be standing perfectly still to have a reticle small enough to Apha one component and moving meant "you will probably hit the mech at medium to close range, somewhere"...heat could also cause bloom. THAT would fix the game..and simultaneously make all the tryhards stroke out.

[Khobai]

Quote

Boating isn't really the problem..convergence is.

And of course PGI made the whole convergence problem much worse when they nerfed mech agility. Mechs used to get agility skills for free and didnt have to pay skill points for them. And lets not forget engine desync. Between the skill tree and engine desync fiasco they completely wrecked mech agility.

what PGI needs to do is unnerf agility and lower damage on select weapons like the CERML

Edited by Khobai, 13 May 2018 - 10:16 PM.

[neofightr]

The problem is how do you get players to burn through their cbills to encourage premium credit buys.
-skill trees
-lots of module options per mech hence lore restriction must not interfere by limiting options per mech
-make it possible to free up weight restrictions by various armor and skeleton options

All these factors not only stray away from lore but water down the game to the cheese we see.

What they should have done is make repair cost the primary cbill burner with only a small selection of locked lore trial mechs having free repairs so you can play when you run out of cash.

This would allow a good burn of cbills to encourage premium time purchases and free up the mech designs so they can be more lore consistent.

PGI is stuck with this neverending puzzle at how to make player base spend more of their cash. Mech bundles are great but a lot of stingy players will settle on a few fav mechs and not bother with new ones for a long time.

Hence we see the cheesefest we now have with massive LRM spam, laser vomit as the cool kids say and just stupid stuff that doesn't support the lore.

But why don't we see repairs as a factor for this game? Because the whining would be massive, all those ppl whining how they paid top dollar for so and so mech and how come I can't use it all the time etc etc.

Edited by neofightr, 13 May 2018 - 11:33 PM.

[Lightfoot]

That all MWO weapons are vanilla damage that do not confer any obvious advantages.

In previous MechWarrior games players knew the map they were dropping on and would bring a load-out for that map. So those weapons had serious differences that conferred an advantage be it long range, heat, short range, etc. Bringing the right weapon was crucial.

MWO can't leverage map effects into their weaponry and so all weapons in MWO needed to be nerfed into a vanilla status. So you get Gauss Rifles with a ridiculous and apocryphal charge-up that you can't pair with PPCs???!!! wtf? LRMs that do no damage unless it's LRM60-80. Double Heatsinks that are only half the boost over standard. And all Clan weapons needed to have streaming damage added to the point where they are mostly garbage.

Also, no mech Knockdowns. Whaaaat? Of course I bet MWO players would go into absolute shock if their mech was knocked down by say LRMs or Gauss Rifles. But knockdowns are the norm for MechWarrior. MWO's mechs are too weak and the weapons recycle too fast for knockdowns to not be fatal. Ah, but Lasers have no knockdown ability so they gain a lot.

Add all that up and you might as well boat. You gain very little from a mixed range load-out or a load-out that doesn't shutdown. Things that were critical in previous MechWarrior games.

[BTGbullseye]

neofightr, on 13 May 2018 - 11:22 PM, said:

What they should have done is make repair cost the primary cbill burner with only a small selection of locked lore trial mechs having free repairs so you can play when you run out of cash.

That was tried, and it very nearly killed the game. It was the reason I didn't go beyond a couple matches when I first got my ultra-meta CTF-4X back in the day, and the reason I didn't return to the game until last year. PGI lost out on all the money I would've spent during that time.

Edited by BTGbullseye, 14 May 2018 - 01:53 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

BTGbullseye, on 14 May 2018 - 01:53 AM, said:

That was tried, and it very nearly killed the game. It was the reason I didn't go beyond a couple matches when I first got my ultra-meta CTF-4X back in the day, and the reason I didn't return to the game until last year. PGI lost out on all the money I would've spent during that time.

??
Really? Repair n Rearm was a problem for you? They had one only one issue during closed beta with rnr - and this was the Dying for 32K month - were earning money with trials was fixed on 32k - doesn't matter if victory or defeat - this debacle and the final inabillity to get some good figures on the way..... (wait thats the real issue about everything - PGI was about feel not spreadsheets right?)

[BTGbullseye]

When the people shoveling $$$ at the devs are the only people that can afford to fire their ballistics or missiles, much less run a mech at full health, apart from the rather sucky trial mechs... There was no progression, and hence no fun.

If right now you were constantly forced to take a trial mech into a QP match against people who are running meta Annihilators,or have no ammo for any of your ballistics/missiles and no armor or HP on your customized mechs, I bet you'd get bored real quick. (especially when you'd have to do it 6 or 7 times just to afford full health, and 2 more times for the ammo)

Edited by BTGbullseye, 14 May 2018 - 02:17 AM.

[Dragonporn]

I don't see any problems with current system regarding c-Bill earnings and spending, actually I see it as a pretty good one. Casual player get so much c-Bills from the get go, and only accumulates more and more, while there's absolutely no need to spend any MC, unless there's a mech or cosmetics you really want. I think this system keeps playerbase we have alive, and new players to stick around. With RnR I currently wouldn't have any problems with it, as well as most non-new players, but newcomers would be completely turned off by this system, as you often can see threads about player feeling himself ripped off, for inability to buy new engine or other components for his mech, which he bought/sold by mistake.

Edited by Dragonporn, 14 May 2018 - 08:01 AM.

[Morderian]

welll boats are in my opinion mainly existing because A) its very effective and B ) it reduces to amount of buttons you need to 2 (which makes for a realy boring playstyle in my opinion)

personally if i would really want to stop boating i would do a few things to discourage it and higher the playerskill levels a bit for example:

1: no coolshots and no heat skills/quirks, because this is dismissing one of the main features to stop boating lasers

with easing the effects of an alpha strike my ancient lowtech (no light engine etc.) Battlemaster for example carries 3 LPL + 4 med theoretically that should be rather hot but thanks to quirks (-5%) and skills (-10%) i it gets extremely cold so i can fire 3 alphas before i have a danger of shutdown and to that we throw a coolshot on the pile and get even colder

of course there can be some exception to the rules like the 3 PPCs awesome but those should be rare exceptions for special mechs (unlike now)

2: heatcontainment comes only from heatsinks too so we lower the capacity of heat that a mech can take and at the same time we add heatpenaltys so you go over the heat limit you get punished (you become slower less ahgile etc.) also i would opticaly show penalty levels on the heatscale in the hud

3: i would experiment with highering the heatdisipation and lowering the heatcapacity/penalty requirements so we cant take much heat but its gone fast to fit the faster gameplay and making stagger firing weapons a lot more viabel instead off alphastriking all the time

now we have (hopefully) reigned in the energy boats lets go over to balistics

4: well for ACs i would do something similar to ghostheat just that in this case we dont make them hotter but we decrease the accuracy and let them fire more shells the more weapons are build in the mech for example you have 2 AC5 nothing happens, you take 4 on the other hand now your AC5 are no longer single projectile weapon but now fire for example 3 projectiles, you use lets say 6 AC5 and the fire for example 6 projectiles per gun similar to large ultra ACs (ofc more guns and projectiles mean a bonus to the ammo storage so we still retain damage/ton level of it)

5:if you fire a lot ACs at the same time or in quick succesion they either A: fly a lot less accurate (aka from fast fire AC20 with 4 AC5 to LBX 20) or B we introduce recoil aka your crosshair wont stay on target forcing the player to fire in short bursts (ofc Ultras and rotarys are a lot less punished)

Edited by Morderian, 14 May 2018 - 06:47 AM.

[Mystere]

razenWing, on 13 May 2018 - 04:26 AM, said:

But What Is Really The Issue?

Automatic near-instant pinpoint pixel-perfect convergence

Edited by Mystere, 14 May 2018 - 06:49 AM.

[Variant1]

El Bandito, on 13 May 2018 - 08:51 AM, said:

That's completely fine.

im glad we agree

[Wil McCullough]

Mystere, on 14 May 2018 - 06:49 AM, said:

Automatic near-instant pinpoint pixel-perfect convergence

agree.

however i don't see a way to solve this. this has been something that's happening since the first mechwarrior game came out.

it's the reason why the hunchie 4p is terrible in battletech but actually pretty good in mwo. when every shot is a called shot with 100% accuracy, shenanigans happen.

[Mystere]

Wil McCullough, on 14 May 2018 - 07:04 AM, said:

agree.

however i don't see a way to solve this. this has been something that's happening since the first mechwarrior game came out.

it's the reason why the hunchie 4p is terrible in battletech but actually pretty good in mwo. when every shot is a called shot with 100% accuracy, shenanigans happen.

The closest approximation to the "delayed convergence" system that existed in closed beta is a "convergence on lock" one. Most, if not all, of the pieces are already in MWO.

Edited by Mystere, 14 May 2018 - 07:35 AM.

[BTGbullseye]

Mystere, on 14 May 2018 - 07:30 AM, said:

The closest approximation to the "delayed convergence" system that existed in closed beta is a "convergence on lock" one. Most, if not all, of the pieces are already in MWO.

This is something that should be the default. Convergence on lock, or convergence at infinity when not locked.

[Grus]

El Bandito, on 13 May 2018 - 05:27 AM, said:

Except even table top BT had gradually switched over to boats, cause boated weapons are simply far more effective, even in tabletop format.

Only way PGI can dissuade people from boating to cheese level is to give negative quirks whenever you mount more than certain amount of the same type of weapons, GH or not. Maybe make exceptions for certain canon boat mechs, such as PPCs for the Awesome, in order to sprinkle in some flavors.

I dissagree....

I would instead buff (for clans) omni quirks if using full set and all hardpoints. For IS (and Clan battlemechs) they would need to have buffs to provide a better neish or role, but again a buff to prefomence if all hardpoints were satisfied. Thus forcing the diverse loadouts without penalizing people that want to boat X Y Z.

Mystere, on 14 May 2018 - 06:49 AM, said:

Automatic near-instant pinpoint pixel-perfect convergence

Would you rather have WoT' s circle of RNGesus? If so... GTFO.

Edited by Grus, 14 May 2018 - 02:59 PM.

[Mystere]

Grus, on 14 May 2018 - 03:01 PM, said:

Would you rather have WoT' s circle of RNGesus? If so... GTFO.

Who said anything about RNG? Or are you one of those who are constantly confused between the concepts of "random" and convergence-based solutions?

Having said that, here is something used to model reality. RNGesus would be proud.

[Mechwarrior1441491]

They were going to do a power draw thing and limit on the engine but people cried out loud. I felt it was a step in the direction of wiping out most boating.