114 replies to this topic

[Grus]

Mortalcoil, on 05 June 2018 - 02:14 AM, said:

PGI has basically thrown up their hands and are saying, "Yes, this game is completely unbalanced. Instead of fixing these underlying problems that make for boring poke fests we have decided to force players to not be allowed to play the best mechs and builds."

PGI, why not just balance your game? This might be the laziest way to make a video game more interesting I have ever seen.

What if Riot decided that it couldn't balance League of Legends, so its next tournament didn't allow buying of items or any champion other than the release champions.

Just balance your game.

but here's the sad part. MWO tournaments have always been boring as hell to me. This one might actually be worth watching... it will at least be funny to see a mech get gibbed by an airstrike...

bah, who am I kidding. PGI is going to cave on this.

I was about to go off on a rant about another game mode being put into play... Then I realise he was talking about the tourney...

But hay maybe that executioner will do more that 12 damage this time...

[Kaeb Odellas]

Brain Cancer, on 05 June 2018 - 03:25 PM, said:

The hilarious thing is many of the balance tools that exist in tabletop never made it into the MWO engine, like a heat scale that does nothing till you hit an arbitrary level then randomly melts parts of your robot off. Because PGI rapidly lost the ability to significantly modify their lostech (and incomprehensible) coding for the MWO engine, it means they're limited in the methods they could actually balance anything. The early MWO engine even had imperfect convergence, which meant snapshooting focused damage was considerably more difficult, but again coding limitations resulted in such things being sacrificed for a functional multiplayer experience, leading to it's own flaws.

Would tabletop-style heat penalties actually be fun to play though? Bring your heat bar up to half and suddenly your aim goes crazy and your mech starts slowing down? That sounds incredibly frustrating, especially for mechs that are stuck with only energy weapons.

[Y E O N N E]

If they must do something different like this, I would have rather seen Clans vs. IS. Clans 450 tons, IS 480 tons, no dupes, maximum of three in a weight class. Best of 3 or 5, teams swapping sides with the final tie-breaker round as mixed teams of 465 tons.

[The Lighthouse]

Brain Cancer, on 05 June 2018 - 03:25 PM, said:

The hilarious thing is many of the balance tools that exist in tabletop never made it into the MWO engine, like a heat scale that does nothing till you hit an arbitrary level then randomly melts parts of your robot off. Because PGI rapidly lost the ability to significantly modify their lostech (and incomprehensible) coding for the MWO engine, it means they're limited in the methods they could actually balance anything. The early MWO engine even had imperfect convergence, which meant snapshooting focused damage was considerably more difficult, but again coding limitations resulted in such things being sacrificed for a functional multiplayer experience, leading to it's own flaws.

Even HBS Battletech decided to NOT have heat scale, for a very good reason.

[Y E O N N E]

The Lighthouse, on 05 June 2018 - 05:39 PM, said:

Even HBS Battletech decided to NOT have heat scale, for a very good reason.

Because rolling penalties on things that are already inherently disadvantage is completely stupid. Like kill streak rewards.

[Brain Cancer]

Kaeb Odellas, on 05 June 2018 - 03:51 PM, said:

Would tabletop-style heat penalties actually be fun to play though? Bring your heat bar up to half and suddenly your aim goes crazy and your mech starts slowing down? That sounds incredibly frustrating, especially for mechs that are stuck with only energy weapons.

There's plenty that could be done to adapt TT heat scales.

You don't need HGauss-style target jiggle, but your robot gets more sluggish as it heats up. Ammo doesn't explode, but it randomly takes gradually increasing amounts of damage if you ride the line, and if it hits zero health, the usual 10% odds of detonation apply, just like crits. You don't have random shutdown chances, but pre 100% can have a chance of temporary extra issues (like HUD malfunction or the like).

A gradual heat scale is part of the inherent balance of the system- how much do you want to temporarily or (risk permament) reduction in capacity for more oomph RIGHT NOW! We don't have that, so it's really easy to put that laservomit or super combi-energy blast together and not worry too much, because as long as you don't pass 100%, absolutely nothing bad happens.

Then you randomly melt and can end up killing yourself at random. Woot. That was so bad, we got ghost heat as an effort to replace an actual heat scale, and frankly I'd rather have gradual effects piling up than "you can't fire three PPCs without setting yourself on fire".

[HammerMaster]

This game IS balanced. In 3025. Current timeline? Ya no.

[Verilligo]

Kaeb Odellas, on 05 June 2018 - 02:35 PM, said:

It would certainly be much easier to balance this game if it weren't held back by the construction and gameplay rules of a decades old tabletop game, but unfortunately it kind of is. Imagine the flood of overly dramatic "I QUIT!" threads that would happen if PGI were to adjust equipment weights and such.

Dramatic changes to item stats would have been totally okay during closed beta, when the state of the game was still very much in flux and the stable of mechs was still quite small, but now? Imagine the headache of having everyone's mech builds suddenly become invalid or underweight. Some of us have hundreds of mechs that would have to be adjusted. People already throw fits over even relatively minor balance changes. It would be a nightmare.

Though we should say, for the record, that HBS Battletech changed slot sizes for some weapons, along with the amount of crits available in each location on a mech. Two large lasers in a CT is perfectly valid there. TT loyalists don't seem to have raised much of a fuss in response.

[dwwolf]

The most balance you can ever have in a game is with chess or similar games where both sides have the same pieces.

Even there the first player is slightly more likely to win.

A game like BT or MWO where there are innumerable variations of weapons, mobility, armor, geometry, etc

The short answer : its impossible.

At best you could calculate some aggregate value for a mech that combines armor, mobility, firepower, range and heat efficiency, further modified by pilot skill.

For team play you then modify that by pilot skill.


Stock BT designs generally are very role specific, but not completely optimised, because IRL a mech would need some viabilty beyond its specific role.

Clan/IS tech is IMBA as hell. 10v12 wouldve been the answer there.

Edited by dwwolf, 06 June 2018 - 06:35 AM.

[Almond Brown]

Jay Leon Hart, on 05 June 2018 - 02:41 PM, said:

However, MWO 2.0...

Not going to happen. The "Community" has made damn sure of that. Why do you think MW5 was made instead of MWO 2.0????

[Tesunie]

Mortalcoil, on 05 June 2018 - 02:14 AM, said:

PGI has basically thrown up their hands and are saying, "Yes, this game is completely unbalanced. Instead of fixing these underlying problems that make for boring poke fests we have decided to force players to not be allowed to play the best mechs and builds."

OR... Just maybe... perhaps... PGI wanted to shake things up more in their own HOME RUN TOURNAMENT to try and make things interesting... Maybe?

Naw. Lets just point a finger at something completely irrelevant and say that "interesting tournament rules" to try and spice things up a bit is PGi not doing X Y or Z right.... Sounds like a wonderful idea.



Seriously though. PGI's choice on how to run their own tournament setting (which is their right) has nothing to do with game balance. If anything this should be a truly interesting challenge to any real elite skilled player participating. Instead of being able to bring a customized mech that can counter a pilots weakness, now the pilot must conform to the mech and utilize a premade mech.

Another person in another thread pointed out that comp play is suppose to be about skill. What better way to show skill than by possibly forcing comp players into the same types of mechs? If all else is the same, all that is left to be different is skill, correct?

I'm kinda hoping they also turn off enhancements/skills and quirks as well.


Personally speaking, this may be the very first tournament in MW:O that I might actually watch. I think it's going to be interesting.

[mogs01gt]

Unlike LoL, MWO has too many variables when it comes to balance. LoL primarily has balancing issues in regards to 3 maps, gear, abilities and stats(stats being the least hardest to balance by). The look of a toon doesnt really matter.

MWO's variables are never ending due to the nature of PP hit scan weapons vs everything else. Then, you have mech design that plays an important role in balance as well. Balance needs to start by removing all differences between the tech and making sure mech scaling uses verify specific parameters. Once you've established which mechs are under-performing, then you can start applying buffs.

You must ignore lore to make an effective multi-player game.

Edited by mogs01gt, 06 June 2018 - 10:40 AM.

[Khobai]

Quote

Clan/IS tech is IMBA as hell. 10v12 wouldve been the answer there.

nah thats just another super convoluted way to try and balance the game. that falls into the same category of stupid as ghost heat.

the only real answer is to make clan tech = IS tech. and to make sure the disparity between the worst and best mechs isnt so great that the worst mechs never have a chance at winning.

Quote

Unlike LoL, MWO has too many variables when it comes to balance. LoL primarily has balancing issues in regards to 3 maps, gear, abilities and stats(stats being the least hardest to balance by). The look of a toon doesnt really matter.

LoL is magnitudes harder to balance than MWO will ever be. LoL has actual counterplay built into its design unlike MWO. Plus LoL is held to a much higher standard for balancing because of its success as an esport.

Balancing MWO wouldnt be that hard. The problem is Paul has this attitude that he doesnt wanna change anything because hes afraid balance might become even worse. Its kept the game paralyzed for a long time.

You dont need to balance innumerable combinations of weapons though. Because most of those innumerable combinations are trash builds. You only need to balance the combinations that are actually viable, which is a fairly small subset of weapon combinations. Theres less than 10 viable combinations of weapons in MWO, which quite frankly is enough to make the game variable and fun. Balancing weapons is the easy part though (provided PGI abandons the absurd notion that clan tech has to be superior). The hardest part is balancing the mechs; PGI needs to come up with a system that treats all mechs consistently based on their hardpoint locations, geometry, scaling, etc...

Edited by Khobai, 06 June 2018 - 11:26 AM.

[IIXxXII]

Ghost heat, double armor, consumables and other extras shift this game away from tabletop and canon battletech.

Stock mech mode could represent a paradigm shift back towards TT and canon rules intended to cater to demographics who purchased harebrained schemes "battletech" game. I don't think its a "game balance" thing its moreso catering to core BT fans.

[FupDup]

IIXxXII, on 06 June 2018 - 11:25 AM, said:

Ghost heat, double armor, consumables and other extras shift this game away from tabletop and canon battletech.

Stock mech mode could represent a paradigm shift back towards TT and canon rules intended to cater to demographics who purchased harebrained schemes "battletech" game. I don't think its a "game balance" thing its moreso catering to core BT fans.

Even the HBS Battletech game takes a dump all over "TT canon" by changing construction rules, ditching the heat scale, and changing weapon values. Since that game was developed with the help of one of the founders of this entire IP, that should tell you something about the original rule set...

[Rampancy]

The Lighthouse, on 05 June 2018 - 05:39 PM, said:

Even HBS Battletech decided to NOT have heat scale, for a very good reason.

They should have

Current meta is a mix of injury fishing with jumpjetting SRM boats riding at or above redline with optional Deathstar in the back abusing the lack of meaningful heat penalties to dish out 250+damage alphas every other round.

[SmokedJag]

Vonbach, on 05 June 2018 - 12:34 PM, said:

It was a mistake to add clans in Battletech and MWO. Without ghost heat and quirks IS mechs wouldn't have a chance against clan mechs. If they just "lets clans be superior" you'd see the game turn into an all
clan fest over night. Unless PGI was nice enough to give the IS there own playground without clans.

Which would happen because the Clans were designed to dominate the BattleTech rules and be exceptionally scary to combat. It was "balanced" by BattleValue (BV) caps and RPG restrictions on how you played Clans. A 1:2 numerical disadvantage was entirely a legit thing for a Clanner to take on. Sending in custom Dire Wolves to kill Awesomes or whatever would be dishonorable. Etc.

You of course can't make players in a multiplayer PC game play that way so of course the Clans inflict brutal pain.

[yrrot]

I was hoping when the launched clans that they would have implemented something to incentivize clan players to bring something less than a maxed out clan mech without toning them down all the way. Like reduced round earnings if your firepower stat was above X or bonuses for bringing mixed loadouts. Maybe even higher payouts for killing OP clan mechs, ect.

You could cause clan players to play more to the fluff by changing the types and amounts they get paid in matches, which seems more fun to me than making every mech the same.

Oh well, all of that is probably too complicated for a bunch of people playing this game.

That's all a different bag of worms though. The WC rules aren't about any of that. They are doing it to be in the same setting as MW5, plain and simple. Everything else is just people wanting to gripe about unrelated bits.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Almond Brown, on 06 June 2018 - 07:08 AM, said:

Not going to happen. The "Community" has made damn sure of that. Why do you think MW5 was made instead of MWO 2.0????

MW5 was what PGI wanted to make from the start, but couldn't get a publisher. MWO was made instead.

And I would personally welcome an MWO 2.0 in UE4 as long as I get to keep my mechs.

[Revis Volek]

Brain Cancer, on 05 June 2018 - 03:28 PM, said:

Amusingly enough, tabletop tournament play doesn't allow for non-stock builds, either.



The only way Clantech will ever be balanced 1:1 is breaking the tech tree entirely, as it's fundamentally built to be better than Inner Sphere design. Thus, Paul and company have done what they usually do when something is too broken for them to fix in an expedited manner- they simply break it completely, much like jump jets got the ream job back in the poptart era of MWO. After all, if you can't use it, it can't break a game.

The values are actually less for clan mechs on some nodes. Like heat gen...


I dont get your logic. Its not the tree its the weapons. Skill forest is terrible in its own right but Clan mechs were not suddenly OP when the skill tree dropped.