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Does Pgi Follow The Lore When Issuing Hardpoints To Mechs?


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#1 FRAGTAST1C

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 12:33 AM

Why?! On top of that, they nerf certain mechs if they deem it to be too powerful?

#2 crazytimes

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 12:39 AM

I thought hardpoints weren't lore, they were a PC thing that has just continued with the IP...

#3 Prototelis

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 12:40 AM

Wut?

Most mechs are generally given hardpoints that relate to what the stock build had, some are inflated. Mechs in the TT game don't have hardpoints, you can literally fill the space with whatever. (there are rulesets that prevent you from doing this by adding costs/turns or applying nerfs.)

They nerf mechs because balance, dur. Not saying I agree with all the ways they do that, but if certain chassis weren't nerfed/buffed the game would be much worse off.

Edited by Prototelis, 22 August 2019 - 12:41 AM.


#4 FRAGTAST1C

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 05:37 AM

Ok, my mistake then. But what was the reasoning behind giving the Spider 5V 2 energy hardpoints but in the CT where only 2 critical slots are available? Also, why make the Rival, Deathwish, Siren and La Malinche have such terrible hardpoint distribution? And not once did PGI think of revisiting those mechs, among many, to change that? I know the answer to all of that is probably the standard, "PGI doing PGI stuff".

#5 Gagis

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 05:44 AM

They have more mechs in the game than they can wrap their heads around, perhaps?

#6 Bombast

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 05:47 AM

View PostFRAGTAST1C, on 22 August 2019 - 05:37 AM, said:

Ok, my mistake then. But what was the reasoning behind giving the Spider 5V 2 energy hardpoints but in the CT where only 2 critical slots are available?


In the lore, the CT is the only place where the Spider SDR-5V had weapons, and it predates a lot of the more recent hardpoint bloat by a lot of time.

A lot of mechs are "missing" things like this. The Cicada max speed is slower than the Assassin largely because it's old.

Quote

Also, why make the Rival, Deathwish, Siren and La Malinche have such terrible hardpoint distribution? And not once did PGI think of revisiting those mechs, among many, to change that? I know the answer to all of that is probably the standard, "PGI doing PGI stuff".


There's 50 quadrillion mechs in this game, they can't all be winners.

Also, the Deathwish doesn't have bad hardpoints, it has a bad case of "IS Design, but no IS Quirks." A great big weapon hump without the bonus durability.

At least it makes the name a true story.

#7 Aidan Crenshaw

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 05:49 AM

First and foremost, most mechs are designed to match their lore counterparts. They then see some balance adjustments, like hardpoint-inflation and quirkage. Then there are the hero designs, which have mostly no representation in the lore, where things have gotten more creative.

#8 Der Geisterbaer

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 09:34 AM

View PostFRAGTAST1C, on 22 August 2019 - 12:33 AM, said:

Does Pgi Follow The Lore When Issuing Hardpoints To Mechs?

In a sense they do while in another they don't. What you have to understand is:
  • TT and its lore don't actually know hardpoints as a concept. The rules (and by implication the lore) only know "available" crit slots and available tonnage as hard limitations. So outside particular campaign rules you can pretty much build your own loadouts on mechanics level and from in fiction perspective your mech has either been re-fitted by crafty technicians or was purpose built in that manner.
  • PGI usually takes the stock (a.k.a. lore) weapon loadouts and grants hardpoints based on said stock weaponry; i.e. any laser / ppc / flamer turn into an energy hardpoint, auto-cannons and machine guns into ballistic ones and missiles / NARC... well into missile ones
  • ECM and AMS also get that hardpoint conversion treatment => no ECM / AMS on a model, no access to these items in MWO
  • Some of the mechs do get additional hardpoints (a.k.a. "inflation") - pretty much based on random / arbitrary balance considerations
  • IIRC none of the mechs in MWO has actually fewer hardpoints than the lore weaponry and gear would suggest - with some minor exceptions like machine gun arrays that have no representation in the game (MLX-G and at least one of the FLEs)

View PostFRAGTAST1C, on 22 August 2019 - 12:33 AM, said:

Why?!


The most obvious answer is: technical design decision because hardpoints are easier to implement and create less constraints for 3D modelling.
But it's also a bit of a game design decision and not necessarily a bad one. Think of this: If MWO mechs didn't have hardpoint limitations what would the consequence of that be for the game?

View PostFRAGTAST1C, on 22 August 2019 - 12:33 AM, said:

On top of that, they nerf certain mechs if they deem it to be too powerful?


Nerfs and buffs would appear to be done for balancing purposes as well. Lore and relative strength in lore / TT don't seem to have a consistant impact on that.

View PostFRAGTAST1C, on 22 August 2019 - 05:37 AM, said:

But what was the reasoning behind giving the Spider 5V 2 energy hardpoints but in the CT where only 2 critical slots are available?


Well, that's because the Spider 5V in lore indeed carries two CT mounted M lasers that take up the 2 available CT crit slots -> see point 2 in the prior list.

View PostFRAGTAST1C, on 22 August 2019 - 05:37 AM, said:

Also, why make the Rival, Deathwish, Siren and La Malinche have such terrible hardpoint distribution?


Well, they seem to have thought that if actual lore can have weak and terribly distributed loadouts that lead to terrible and weak hardpoint distributions then their own creations can have those as well. ~shrug~

View PostFRAGTAST1C, on 22 August 2019 - 05:37 AM, said:

And not once did PGI think of revisiting those mechs, among many, to change that?


A matter of cost / benefit calculation. Adding hardpoint to or redistributing hardpoints on existing mechs is pretty much a workload as intensive as building a completely new mech.

View PostFRAGTAST1C, on 22 August 2019 - 05:37 AM, said:

I know the answer to all of that is probably the standard, "PGI doing PGI stuff".


You'd be hard pressed to find a large number of development studios that would be willing to do the kind of changes you're asking for there on a free-to-play title.

#9 Prototelis

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 10:04 AM

Machine gun arrays and light ACs would be awesome.

#10 Der Geisterbaer

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 11:47 AM

View PostPrototelis, on 22 August 2019 - 10:04 AM, said:

Machine gun arrays [..] would be awesome.


All you'd get there is a serious (and most likely unbalancing) hardpoint inflation mechanic on mechs that can afford the 0.5t plus additional machine gun weight for the array ( typically medium mechs and above) because their original main function is already a given in MWO: You're already shooting all your machine guns in the direction where you're aiming instead of randomly distributing over all hit zones.

#11 Prototelis

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 12:19 PM

random hits are garbage lol.

#12 FupDup

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 12:32 PM

View PostDer Geisterbaer, on 22 August 2019 - 11:47 AM, said:

All you'd get there is a serious (and most likely unbalancing) hardpoint inflation mechanic on mechs that can afford the 0.5t plus additional machine gun weight for the array ( typically medium mechs and above) because their original main function is already a given in MWO: You're already shooting all your machine guns in the direction where you're aiming instead of randomly distributing over all hit zones.

Packing 4 MGs into a single hardpoint would obviously break MG balancing in a much harder way than the Piranha did. Even IS MGs would have to be turbonerfed to account for the ability to pack more than a dozen MGs on virtually every mech above the light class.

Something less problematic would be for the array to be an add-on item that makes all of the MGs connected to it have very tight spread and a bit more range or something. Coding it might be wonky though so I guess PGI's current approach of just omitting arrays from mechs that carry them (like the MLX-G) is adequate.

#13 Der Geisterbaer

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 12:33 PM

Just think of the horror an Annihilator with 24 heavy machine guns + 4 M lasers ;)

#14 FupDup

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 12:34 PM

View PostDer Geisterbaer, on 22 August 2019 - 12:33 PM, said:

Just think of the horror an Annihilator with 24 heavy machine guns + 4 M lasers Posted Image

The game has a hardcoded weapon limit at 16, so alas such a beautiful monstrosity will never be possible.

#15 Shanrak

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 12:36 PM

View PostFRAGTAST1C, on 22 August 2019 - 05:37 AM, said:

Ok, my mistake then. But what was the reasoning behind giving the Spider 5V 2 energy hardpoints but in the CT where only 2 critical slots are available? Also, why make the Rival, Deathwish, Siren and La Malinche have such terrible hardpoint distribution? And not once did PGI think of revisiting those mechs, among many, to change that? I know the answer to all of that is probably the standard, "PGI doing PGI stuff".


A lot of those are because they are heros and PGI was trying to avoid being labeled as Pay 2 Win.

#16 Der Geisterbaer

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 12:42 PM

View PostFupDup, on 22 August 2019 - 12:34 PM, said:

The game has a hardcoded weapon limit at 16, so alas such a beautiful monstrosity will never be possible.


Hey, it wasn't me who suggested that machine gun arrays would be awesome ... and I guess if PGI were stupid enough to introduce them the next demand would be that this weapon limit is altered.

Btw. Are you sure about 16 being a hard coded limit? Because it's possible to configure a 20 hardpoint Direwolf (never tried equipping it)

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 22 August 2019 - 12:47 PM.


#17 JediPanther

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 12:59 PM

Even though the spider 5v is the worst is light mech you can use it to do just really stupid **** like an ams and tag lfe/std build with no actual lasers.
Even Sarna says spiders suck(except for the ecm one) :http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Spider

Pgi relies too much on their 'quirks' to make or break mechs. Just mouse over mechs in the store and see them with things like is mg rof 5-10% when they have 1-2 ballistic slots. And it's not limited to just the lights either. Ember recently got stealth nerfed when it's mg rof got cut in about half.

Or the ever so popular flamer range of 5% quirk just because the mech comes with one stock. i'd rather just ram my enemy than use a flamer.

#18 Nesutizale

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 01:13 PM

View PostShanrak, on 22 August 2019 - 12:36 PM, said:

A lot of those are because they are heros and PGI was trying to avoid being labeled as Pay 2 Win.


Personaly I think that was a good decission. Those who want to only play meta have enough options to do so. Everyone else can have fun with not min/max-ed mechs.

#19 FRAGTAST1C

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Posted 22 August 2019 - 11:58 PM

Even quirks are all over the place and most of them are wasted. I remember seeing an IS mech with 1 energy hardpoint in the head and it's got a Energy Cooldown of 10%. I mean....

PGI should realize that making all mechs viable is a good way to sell more mech bays. I'd definitely have bought the Spider 5V if I could carry 2 Snubnose PPCs. Instead, it's either 1 or 2 MPLs. Nah. Just 'cause some wiki has written that most Spiders are bad doesn't mean PGI should make them bad.

They know how the their game works by now. Just arrange the hardpoints in such a way that the mechs can make use of it. There are some mechs with UAC jam chance reduction but you can't boat even 2 UAC10s in them 'cause all ballistics are on one arm.

#20 Prototelis

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Posted 23 August 2019 - 12:02 AM

The problem is, for whatever reason, they don't revisit mechs and give them love to keep up with power creep.

Like if that spider had 60% energy cooldown (spitballing) to give it DPS to compete with the nominal 5-6 mpulse it would be awesome.





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