4 replies to this topic

[Six-Pack]

What are your thoughts on overhauling hardpoints restricting them to be able to support a prespecified maximum size of a weapon system? Something like:

Small: MG's and AC2.
Medium: AC5 to AC10 and Gauss.
Large: AC20 and Heavy Gauss

For energy it would be:
Tag, small and medium lasers and Light PPC in one category,
Large lasers and PPC's in the other.

This would allow devs to adress hardpoint inflation, openning up more tools to differentiate mech variants as well as mechs.

Ie if we take Mauler for example MX90 would be confined to small sized ballistics like MG's and AC2's, while 2P would be able to carry bigger weapons like AC10's or 20's.

Annies would be confined to quad medium ballistics leaving dual HGauss open for Fafnirs.

Consider juggling some hardpoints around variants so that the one that is meant to carry more of smaller ones has the necessary amount.

What about hardpoint specific quirks? If a stock variant carries a Gauss Cannon in the arm make that sweet -15% cooldown specific to that arm hardpoint and not the MG nipple in the side torso.

[Verilligo]

This is what MW4 did. It was smart then because the game was balanced to account for it. To do it now would require too much effort and would likely upset people even further. It does also limit creativity to a certain extent and doesn't necessarily mix well with the criticals system already in place.

[Prototelis]

MW4s sized hard points basically only made two classes in the game relevant.

It was terrible for balance. MW4 had TERRIBLE balance.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Sized hardpoints would not improve gameplay in any measurable way, but would instantly obsolete reams and reams of variants which didn't have the perfect storm of hardpoint sizes and locations.

Which, as Prototelis noted, was exactly what happened in MW4. 80% of the roster was trash due to not having large enough hardpoints for boating CERLL, CGR, and CERPPC, leaving a pathetic handful of heavies and assaults viable in unrestricted play. While MWO has better balance between larger and smaller weapons than MW4 had, the larger issue remains: boating is and always will be king, so whatever can boat the most of the best will be the meta. Remove the ability of already sub-par 'Mechs to compete by taking better builds, and you take away their ability to compete with 'Mechs that were blessed with better hardpoints and geometry.

This experiment has been tried before, and it failed.

[Prototelis]

MWO should have had named weapons with different stats; hardpoint starved mechs should have had access to named weapons with better stats to keep up with power creep.