59 replies to this topic

[Alexandra Hekmatyar]

Mean come on it's just a humongous waste of time it's never gonna be perfect.
They could be pulling their resources from this shizzle towards Faction play which they say is going to be their big focus this year or optimization or find a way to integrate all old maps in the rotation without sacrificing other things, fixing their draw distance issue and streamline their freaking hitboxes on certain maps.

But no instead PGI is wasting time on removing and adding quirks buffing and nerfing weapons which creates an imbalance in other weapons and mechs.

[Bud Crue]

There is no balance. There is only the pretense of balance. It’s just mucking with things to get people to blow c-bills on stuff to try and compensate. The pretense of balance is a c-bill sink that drives MWO’s feeble “here is a new 3-mech pack, but you only need one, so you may as well wait for it to be availble for c-bills” economy. It is, for all intent and purpose the basis of the game as it now exists.

You buy it, they break it, you try and fix it to account for what they broke, or just buy something new that does what your now broken stuff did, then PGI makes incremental changes to maybe even fix it, and then you go back and do it all again. That is “balance”. It’s never going away. It’s the fundamental base content of this game, and Chris has even held it up as an illustration to show PGI’s dedication to MWO’s future development. This is the game.

As to faction play, Russ has repeatedly said over the years that faction play would be focused on. Yeah. The last time was after he admitted to having given it no development or even oversight for more than six months. Then he took away all the buckets, added conquest and called it good. This latest effort by Paul that was started...what...last August? Is still in the maybe we’ll have an announcement in march phase of development. Never give up hope though.

[Antares102]

What Bud Crue said...
Plus balance is an illusion that always cuts off the top of the most overpowered thing which then leads to the 2nd overpowered thing to be used. If currently the most overpowered "item1" (mech, weapon, whatever) has a power rating of 100 and the 2nd "item2" 98 then item1 is getting nerfed and everybody simply switches to item2.
This way practially nothing has changed sinse the drop of overpoweredness only dropped by two points.
Its the same in every game and some games actually use the balancing system to keep a game "fresh" that players always have something to experiment with.
Perfect balance is actually something nobody wants because its would elad to a stale game play.

Ah yes and also this:

Edited by Antares102, 21 January 2019 - 08:45 AM.

[Sjorpha]

Online games do require ongoing balancing to stay healthy, the point isn't to reach a perfect state of balance but is rather to be viewed as a form of maintenance. It's a fallacy to say "It'll never be perfect!" as if that was an argument to not work on balance.

Then obviously that ongoing balancing can be handled more or less competently, but the underlying necessity of it is just a reality of online competitive PvP games in general.

I can agree that they shouldn't prioritize big resources to mechanical changes and other big balance projects, it should just be regular minor buffs and nerfs to whatever is too strong or weak as evidenced primarily by tournament results, just like in every other online game.

As for focusing on Faction Play, whatever that means I doubt there will be anything major for MWO this year.

[MrVaad]

I played world of warcraft for years and i remember the nerfs were constant and targetting a different class each patch.
The joke was who would get the nerf "bat" in the next patch

I have a question for the MWO veterans, does the nerf game eventually puts an old nerfed mech/weapon in the meta ?

[R Valentine]

Constant tweaks is necessary for any massive multiplayer game. When a company stops making adjustments is when they're about to go under or axe their game. The game would be unbelievably stagnant if they didn't even try to balance things here and there. We all know it's impossible for it to be perfect, but that doesn't mean things can't get better.

[MrVaad]

Yes, with time, i understood why it's needed.

But in wow, we knew the meta was changing and everyone would get its turn. In MWO, i don't know as i've only been playing for two months.

Edited by MrVaad, 21 January 2019 - 07:11 AM.

[Bud Crue]

MrVaad, on 21 January 2019 - 06:10 AM, said:

I have a question for the MWO veterans, does the nerf game eventually puts an old nerfed mech/weapon in the meta ?

Sort-a-kind-a. Maybe the better answer is occasionally and selectively.

I mean LRMs are a great example of a weapon that has been repeatedly been OP, reduced to crap, and then risen up again (see previous “LRMageddons”). But most weapons are nerfed to mediocrity and left there except in cases where a specific mech might be quirked to encourage their play and then those few builds act as the baseline (All the variants pre-skills tree running a 30% velocity, etc. quirk for PPCs did not make PPCs any more dominant then than now).

Often it is a case of PGI nerfs something into the ground, and it lingers on the shelf unplayed for years until it is brought back. Example of this would be Victors as a chassis. Left for dead for two years then, boom, agility and armor quirks and suddenly they were fun again. But it took years, and even then that is pretty rare. More often, once something is made mediocre (Panthers following rescale) PGI fails to recognize that mediocrity and if they do quirk it (after a long wait) they will do so in a manner that has nothing to do with why the thing in question is mediocre in the first place (see next patch -10% heat buff for the Panther 10P for example).

The bigger issue in terms of actual balance changes (as opposed to the they are just mucking around to drive purchases) is that PGI tends to over do the nerfs and destroy what makes a weapon or mech competitive (or even viable) and then leaves it that way. Worse, sometimes they eliminate entire playstyles. SPLs being an example of the former and GH penalty for Gauss/PPC the later.

So yes, occasionally something nerfed to death is revived but mostly not.

[Prototelis]

Balance is a moving target, there would be a whole lot more bitching if they didn't try at all.

[Asym]

PGI is in the business to sell mechs because that is their only deliverable..... Not subscriptions or merchandise...

Whales literately buy everything and sometimes in 3 or 4 packages for alternative accounts. I know2 on that hasn't played the game in months and yet, has every mech ever offered...... !!!

Sales and TTK are the revenue determinates PGI uses nerf's to control. Take the Night Gyr as an example. Pre-skill tree change, that heavy was a "hoot to play" and a "monster" heavy mech.... But, Solaris was coming up strategically and TTK needed to be "extended quite a bit" for Solaris to even exist....... So, the era change was designed to reduce the effectiveness of the entire community and lengthen TTK and, to sell more mechs..... The Gyr was gelded into obscurity....along with any other mech that threatened Solaris........and, we wonder why simple weapons like the SpL was nerf'd and ..........

Solaris is a fail and FP is a fail: for opposite reasons ! Otherwise, we'd see huge numbers of players going there everyday ! We see very few but the die hard teams that drove everyone off and the vets whom think they are "great".......the rest of us left when PGI nerf'd everything to accommodate Solaris.

Balance is a facade to control content and revenue......... Even though the real answer to make this game viable is just the opposite; and, PGI just doesn't have the skills or intuition to revert nerf's and actually open up the battle spaces in lethality to actually speed up TTk and greatly enhance the depth in precision and ranged weapons..... Why? Because that makes the game a open world battle space where skill is more than what is behind the reticle.....

[Alexandra Hekmatyar]

I'm just saying that they should focus on bigger fish then balancing.
Hitboxes on maps like rubelite and tourmaline also draw distance is an issue and let's not forget the most basic thing in any online multiplayer game is an actual functioning friend list.
Heck ask yourself outside of balancing that could use some fixing up.

Prototelis, on 21 January 2019 - 07:43 AM, said:

Balance is a moving target, there would be a whole lot more bitching if they didn't try at all.

Plenty of people leaving the game of the balancing decisions or starters who got put off by the insanely terrible tutorial and the terrible optimization in this game.

[DANKnuggz]

Balance would be MUCH easier to achieve if nerfs/buffs weren't so heavy handed... you ever tried to balance anything in real life by adding or removing LARGE quantities from either side of the balance equation with any real hope of success??

Balance takes a DELICATE hand... not the clumsily heavy handed attempts we've seen in this game (most games suffer from this actually)... make SMALL adjustments to bring weapons and mechs more in line with others in its field instead. Balance will never be achieved so long as PGI keeps shoving the pendulum so hard one way or the other.

often times over performing mechs/weapons are just a bit out of line but in the hands of a skilled player that small advantage is all they need to go crazy with it. However you should NEVER balance based on what the top tier can do since they have the tendency to make the problem seem much larger than it really is. Balancers should always remove the top tier players and the bottom tier players from their calculations since those two groups vastly skew results through their mastery and lack thereof.

I couldn't tell you when/if I've ever seen a member of the development/balance teams actually playing in a match but it seems hard to balance something you have almost no practical experience with... numbers on a chart do not paint nearly as clear a picture for balance w/o practical personal experience to put it into context. Players can TELL you what its like all they want but it'll never be a substitute for actual experience.

[JediPanther]

MrVaad, on 21 January 2019 - 06:10 AM, said:

I played world of warcraft for years and i remember the nerfs were constant and targetting a different class each patch.
The joke was who would get the nerf "bat" in the next patch

I have a question for the MWO veterans, does the nerf game eventually puts an old nerfed mech/weapon in the meta ?

Old mechs work just fine. chase the meta for the bigest alpha or most of x weapon you'll constantly have to buy new mechs to replace the nerfed ones. Out of about 100 mechs I use only about 20 with any regularity. once you realize all mechs just have the same three weapon types and shoot the other mechs you don't need to buy more or new ones unless the hard points and location matter to you.

We have missiles,guns and lasers. That's it for the weapons. How they fire,look, cool down and damage is the differences between them. An ac 20 will do 20 damage whether it is one big slug or several smaller slugs adding up to 20 damage etc.

[Peter2k]

They have one dedicated guy (Chris) working on balance.

Paul os doing all kinds of things, probably figuring out how to change a conquest timer from 1500 to 1750.

And everyone else isn't actually working on MWO.
You could make a case for mechs, but they could be in MW5 as well (per DLC for instance) and they have to sell something in the meantime.
That's why I'm not really surprised at a MW5 pre order nearly a year in advance (if PGI doe not move the releases date again)



They have to at least hold up the pretense that MWO is still being worked on.
If they dropped balancing from MWO then you have nothing left really to announce for MWO at all.

Classic maps for instance was to be looked at after FP changes, that's months away, maybe over half a year until implementation .
Things always took ages to get done, but now, ugh

Edited by Peter2k, 21 January 2019 - 09:36 AM.

[Prototelis]

Alexandra Hekmatyar, on 21 January 2019 - 08:04 AM, said:

Plenty of people leaving the game of the balancing decisions or starters who got put off by the insanely terrible tutorial and the terrible optimization in this game.

Plenty more would leave if they did nothing. Buff/nerf cycles are normal for online games.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Alexandra Hekmatyar, on 21 January 2019 - 05:00 AM, said:

Mean come on it's just a humongous waste of time it's never gonna be perfect.
They could be pulling their resources from this shizzle towards Faction play which they say is going to be their big focus this year or optimization or find a way to integrate all old maps in the rotation without sacrificing other things, fixing their draw distance issue and streamline their freaking hitboxes on certain maps.

But no instead PGI is wasting time on removing and adding quirks buffing and nerfing weapons which creates an imbalance in other weapons and mechs.

I totally agree. I have said this for years actually and even posted a thread about the recent LRM changes just flat out pleading with PGI to stop messing with stuff.

First your absolutely right. It is never going to be perfect and secondly, every time they fix one thing, it breaks another or even more commonly breaks several things. I mean they decided that Medium Lasers were doing too much damage, so they nerfed the cooldown making it take 33% longer to cooldown. It might have solved the problem with heavier mechs having too much DPS but many, if not most of my favorite Light Mech and some Medium mech builds were dependant on the DPS coming from Medium Lasers and nerfing the cooldown ended up being a direct 25% reduction in DPS on those mechs. My PHX-2, Grinner and Purifier went from being some of my favorite mechs, that I would play virtually all the time to being nearly in the scrap heap. With all of them I went from being able to post 400-500 damage and reliable get kills with to barely breaking 250-300 damage and generally having to settle with just assists. Two of these mechs cost me real money so now that is money wasted.

This is just one example, I could talk about how the JJ nerf killed off my Heavy Metal and Dragon Slayer, again both real money mechs for me. I could talk how the Gauss Nerf killed off my love of the Flame, another of my real money mechs. I can talk about the tens of millions of C-bills I have spent having to rebuild my mechs and redefine their skills each and every time they make a balancing pass.

So now we have the proposed LRM changes which will have the same effect. All of a sudden we are going to have direct fire lock on LRMs which will encroach on things like MRMs, ATMs and Streaks as why would you mount a unguided MRM if you can direct fire LRMs that lock on to their targets and guarantee a hit. Also why use Streaks if you can mount LRM and have the best of both worlds, long range Indirect fire and relatively short range direct fire. Also if you happened to be someone who used LRM's in close support of your team operating in the second line and relying on the LRMs to arc over the heads of your teammates, well that entire playstyle. Point is why it will likely encourage at least some LRM users to play more forward and aggressive, it breaks tons of other things to make that happen and they cycle continues.

So what I crave is stability. Aside for a very few mechs and a very few things (ahem mass MGs), there doesn't need to be any more drastic changes. I have always side it, the core game play is very solid. It is generally fun to pilot a mech and most weapons systems are generally fun to you as well. Nothing really needs to be changed to make the game better except PGI refocusing on adding real content like tons and tons of more maps however they neglect the map making and focus on "balancing" which just ensures they will piss SOMEONE off who's favorite mech just got tossed in the scrap heap due to the change.

Enough is Enough.

[MechaBattler]

At this rate it's the only thing that keeps things a little fresh. I would rather see sweeping changes. Than stagnate months of nothing. We're certainly not getting any meaningful content anytime soon! So it'd be nice to at least see some changes that breath a little life in some old mechs.

[Bud Crue]

MechaBattler, on 21 January 2019 - 01:09 PM, said:

...So it'd be nice to at least see some changes that breath a little life in some old mechs.

Buffs are always welcome. Nerfs, especially nerfs to things that are not over performing, do not breath new life into anything. All they do is compound the frustration of playing anything other than meta, and lead to the majority of us consistently playing the same handful of mechs over and over; it's as if PGI is striving for stagnation.

[justcallme A S H]

Prototelis, on 21 January 2019 - 07:43 AM, said:

Balance is a moving target, there would be a whole lot more bitching if they didn't try at all.

To a point.

Skill Tree (and desync) basically upset the billie cart in a massive way.

Such that 18 month on there is some etremely large holes in balance on a weapon and chassis basis.

The Community Balance Document really was the best way to go about it all, alas nothing much has come of it. And by that I mean weeks to months of work by a number of individuals who get the balance and gameplay at a very high level.

Of course that was only the start. Mobilty buffs for mechs has been good even if some of them were a bit, I dunno, under done?

[Y E O N N E]

OP, allow me to present my well-researched and detailed rebuttal:

noe