134 replies to this topic

[F L A S H]

"those who don't learn from history is doomed to repeat it"

At some point you guys just have to accept that the people hate Chris's ideas and that he seems to have a fundamentally different understanding on how the game should play than the people that actually love the game.

Gulag or GTFO.

[John Bronco]

It's pretty simple - make MWO fun again - give us the gulag.

Don't overthink it.

[Yondu Udonta]

Who do you think understands best regarding balance changes to the game, a group of players that comprise mostly of top players who have been playing MWO consistently for years OR developers who barely put any time in MWO and have not addressed blatant incompetency of certain weapon systems for years? Literally everything has been provided by the Gulag, just put it in a PTS and if the majority think that weapon balance is improved, then implement it into the live game. Straight up, the Gulag literally did your work for FREE.

[Chris Lowrey]

Navid A1, on 02 March 2021 - 11:19 PM, said:

Saying that engine crits leading to death being as one of the things you wanted in the game is deeply concerning.

I think wanting such a system is the result of fundamental misunderstanding of what game you are dealing with.

MWO is a single spawn PvP. There is no return, there is no comeback, and an insta-death tied into an RNG event means it would just be a frustration simulator. You should not halt a player's gameplay based on RNG. I'd argue even ammo explosion is a detrimental and unfortunate mechanic that is put into the game.


Examples of where this system (RNG-based death... even saying this makes me facepalm) "could" potentially work:

1- a game like MW:LL where you still have a chance to come back in, in a new mech, and still push against the enemy and compensate your previous death

2- a tabletop game where the player's gameplay is not directly halted by an RNG event.


Like many here and yourself, we all want a fun experience in MWO. Hope we can get there in the future.

I never said specifically engine crit deaths, but an overall engine balance pass. I'm well aware of the feeling of RNG deaths and the fact that this is not Tabletop. (Something that will be very apparent soon.) The position I'm coming from is where you have 3 options in the 'Mechlab, and only one of them is ever the right option near 100% of the time. This is needless to say, less than ideal when it comes to average players who do not spend time in these forums or spreadsheet warrior through every minute game mechanic in this very mechanically dense game. As for those that don't know any better, this is just one instance of basically being presented with a coin-flip option that has a 1/2 or 2/3rds chance of picking the wrong option. With potentially huge ramifications to in-match performance. Which is something that can be discouraging for those players who will never enter the forums, or look up you-tube build videos. (Of which there are a lot of them.) Fixing that aspect of the 'Mechlab that there is a clear use imbalance between engines has been the white whale that I have long sought, not specifically death by engine crits.

Regardless of my own personal feeling on the matter, this is not what the team has, or will be focusing on for the foreseeable future, as like I said, Its a huge amount of work, for potentially little gain. But it is something that I am always curious to check the temperature on.

[Nightbird]

Chris Lowrey, on 03 March 2021 - 08:14 AM, said:

Regardless of my own personal feeling on the matter, this is not what the team has, or will be focusing on for the foreseeable future, as like I said, Its a huge amount of work, for potentially little gain. But it is something that I am always curious to check the temperature on.

Right, not worth any dev time atm. Many low hanging fruit to pick from.

[YueFei]

Chris Lowrey, on 03 March 2021 - 08:14 AM, said:

The position I'm coming from is where you have 3 options in the 'Mechlab, and only one of them is ever the right option near 100% of the time. This is needless to say, less than ideal when it comes to average players who do not spend time in these forums or spreadsheet warrior through every minute game mechanic in this very mechanically dense game. As for those that don't know any better, this is just one instance of basically being presented with a coin-flip option that has a 1/2 or 2/3rds chance of picking the wrong option.

This is the core issue. You have various folks with different preferred playstyles, and they aren't so heavily invested in the game that they'll just adapt to whatever is strong and keep playing if PGI happens to badly nerf their preferred playstyle.

I've mentioned this before, but I introduced a friend to this game. He played CS:GO competitively, so he's pretty good at FPS, but he wasn't gonna commit tons of effort to MWO, just playing it at a casual level with me. He liked the idea of brawling, so he slapped on AC20 and SRMs.

Then AC20 velocity got nerfed badly, and SRMs were changed to 1.5 damage per missile.

He quit MWO, and never came back. He wasn't gonna invest the time to adapt and switch to another weapon system and fighting style.

One of the biggest issues with the way PGI has been balancing has been the heavy-handedness with nerfs. Even when nerfs were called for and justified, PGI tends to implement nerfs in a hamfisted way, when what is called for is a light touch and a nuanced approach. By coming down so heavy-handed, you obliterate entire playstyles, and hemorrhage players who would rather quit than play a different playstyle.

[My Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ]

Chris Lowrey, on 03 March 2021 - 08:14 AM, said:

As for those that don't know any better, this is just one instance of basically being presented with a coin-flip option that has a 1/2 or 2/3rds chance of picking the wrong option. With potentially huge ramifications to in-match performance. Which is something that can be discouraging for those players who will never enter the forums, or look up you-tube build videos. (Of which there are a lot of them.)

The mechlab is a core part of the game, games are won and lost in the mechlab. If people cannot be arsed to use their brains and weigh up the pros and cons of stuff then quite frankly they deserve to be discouraged as using the mechlab is part of the game. Not knowing the mechlab is up there with stuff like torso twisting, if you don't learn it you will never be any good.

[Bud Crue]

Chris Lowrey, on 03 March 2021 - 08:14 AM, said:

The position I'm coming from is where you have 3 options in the 'Mechlab, and only one of them is ever the right option near 100% of the time. This is needless to say, less than ideal when it comes to average players who do not spend time in these forums or spreadsheet warrior through every minute game mechanic in this very mechanically dense game.

This perspective from you has been killing the fun, and frankly potential for mech sales in this game for years.

You have hundreds of variants of mechs of which each could have an ideal/optimal build (or in some cases even several) for a specified roles, but instead of encouraging that you insist that most variants be some sort of open ended plethora of player choice, which results the vast majority of variants being less than optimal regardless of the choices made. Make the choices easier for the player for each mech or variant. You want to encourage some other choice? Then do it in another mech or another variant. You have the tools. Use them.

[LordNothing]

i have extreme doubts that the gulag will make the game fun again. for this game it will make the game a little bit more fair as far as weapons are concerned (and there are still over 400 useless mech variants in the game). the mechanics in this game are significanlty simpler than what i am used to. things were a lot more fun when balance was a mess, because you never know what you might find you can do in the mech lab. balance should be whack a mole because the meta changes with every patch. perfect balance is boring.

but here is an idea, the community has this set of numbers they want to test. why not make it so they can set up a pts or even a test lan to run these numbers and actually validate them in an environment closer to the game actual. and im not talking testing grounds with a modded client. because i know when you take your perfectly honed spreadsheets and enter them into your mod or your game data files, the get results that either feel instantly stale or or there is some hard to quantify difference in mechanics that vastly changes the performance of a particular weapon and you either end up with something useless or something that needs the whack a mole treatment. before long your spreadsheets are a bloody mess because theory didn't match reality. the gulag really needs to go through that process, several iterations, more than i think pgi would like to host. it needs hard testing in a live environment. even if the gulag has the spreadsheets transcoded into xml that the game can instantly utilize, email that to pgi and maybe they can set up the pts. its an avenue that needs to be explored.

[Stonefalcon]

Chris Lowrey, on 03 March 2021 - 08:14 AM, said:

I never said specifically engine crit deaths, but an overall engine balance pass. I'm well aware of the feeling of RNG deaths and the fact that this is not Tabletop. (Something that will be very apparent soon.) The position I'm coming from is where you have 3 options in the 'Mechlab, and only one of them is ever the right option near 100% of the time. This is needless to say, less than ideal when it comes to average players who do not spend time in these forums or spreadsheet warrior through every minute game mechanic in this very mechanically dense game. As for those that don't know any better, this is just one instance of basically being presented with a coin-flip option that has a 1/2 or 2/3rds chance of picking the wrong option. With potentially huge ramifications to in-match performance. Which is something that can be discouraging for those players who will never enter the forums, or look up you-tube build videos. (Of which there are a lot of them.) Fixing that aspect of the 'Mechlab that there is a clear use imbalance between engines has been the white whale that I have long sought, not specifically death by engine crits.

Regardless of my own personal feeling on the matter, this is not what the team has, or will be focusing on for the foreseeable future, as like I said, Its a huge amount of work, for potentially little gain. But it is something that I am always curious to check the temperature on.

Mate, you had your chance in 2018, and you blew it. The majority of the playerbase has no faith in your ability to balance a FPS when you seem so insistent to emulate a tabletop game most of the time. Just because the two franchises exist in the same universe doesn't mean we should be running around the battlefield with 10s CDs on all our weapons.

[FupDup]

Chris Lowrey, on 03 March 2021 - 08:14 AM, said:

I never said specifically engine crit deaths, but an overall engine balance pass. I'm well aware of the feeling of RNG deaths and the fact that this is not Tabletop. (Something that will be very apparent soon.) The position I'm coming from is where you have 3 options in the 'Mechlab, and only one of them is ever the right option near 100% of the time. This is needless to say, less than ideal when it comes to average players who do not spend time in these forums or spreadsheet warrior through every minute game mechanic in this very mechanically dense game. As for those that don't know any better, this is just one instance of basically being presented with a coin-flip option that has a 1/2 or 2/3rds chance of picking the wrong option. With potentially huge ramifications to in-match performance. Which is something that can be discouraging for those players who will never enter the forums, or look up you-tube build videos. (Of which there are a lot of them.) Fixing that aspect of the 'Mechlab that there is a clear use imbalance between engines has been the white whale that I have long sought, not specifically death by engine crits.

Regardless of my own personal feeling on the matter, this is not what the team has, or will be focusing on for the foreseeable future, as like I said, Its a huge amount of work, for potentially little gain. But it is something that I am always curious to check the temperature on.

For engine rebalancing, an idea that some people on the forum have had is for the different engine types to affect the health of your torso sections, i.e. STD engine gives you a ton of extra HP (structure and/or armor) on all torso sections, IS XL gets a bit of a boost on side torsos, CXL gets no bonuses, etc. Beyond HP maybe IS XL might increase agility, maybe STD might increase heat capacity or dissipation, I dunno.

Existing ST penalties for CXL and LFE would remain, and the IS XL would still die upon ST loss.

That might be less difficult than trying to give the different engines their own unique penalty levels. In theory it could use similar coding as Omnipods giving you quirks when you mount them. Whatcha think about that?

Edited by FupDup, 03 March 2021 - 03:21 PM.

[Brauer]

Chris Lowrey, on 03 March 2021 - 08:14 AM, said:

I never said specifically engine crit deaths, but an overall engine balance pass. I'm well aware of the feeling of RNG deaths and the fact that this is not Tabletop. (Something that will be very apparent soon.) The position I'm coming from is where you have 3 options in the 'Mechlab, and only one of them is ever the right option near 100% of the time. This is needless to say, less than ideal when it comes to average players who do not spend time in these forums or spreadsheet warrior through every minute game mechanic in this very mechanically dense game. As for those that don't know any better, this is just one instance of basically being presented with a coin-flip option that has a 1/2 or 2/3rds chance of picking the wrong option. With potentially huge ramifications to in-match performance. Which is something that can be discouraging for those players who will never enter the forums, or look up you-tube build videos. (Of which there are a lot of them.) Fixing that aspect of the 'Mechlab that there is a clear use imbalance between engines has been the white whale that I have long sought, not specifically death by engine crits.

Regardless of my own personal feeling on the matter, this is not what the team has, or will be focusing on for the foreseeable future, as like I said, Its a huge amount of work, for potentially little gain. But it is something that I am always curious to check the temperature on.

You responded to someone calling for engine crit deaths by saying that an engine balance pass including "mechanics such as this" was your personal white whale. So in my opinion you're being pretty disingenuous here in attempting to walk that back. I am glad to hear that this is not on the table and hope that the team does not go down this "tabletop simulator" route that you seem committed to.

[Meep Meep]

Chris Lowrey, on 03 March 2021 - 08:14 AM, said:

I never said specifically engine crit deaths, but an overall engine balance pass.

I would be more than happy if IS xl engines didn't kill you on loss of a single torso. Why not give it another penalty similar to legging? That way you are still alive but can only move around at a crawl which is its own death sentence but one you have a chance of beating. This would be a huge buff to big IS mechs with poor hitboxes that need an xl to be able to function.

Edited by Meep Meep, 03 March 2021 - 04:05 PM.

[The6thMessenger]

YueFei, on 03 March 2021 - 09:12 AM, said:

One of the biggest issues with the way PGI has been balancing has been the heavy-handedness with nerfs. Even when nerfs were called for and justified, PGI tends to implement nerfs in a hamfisted way, when what is called for is a light touch and a nuanced approach. By coming down so heavy-handed, you obliterate entire playstyles, and hemorrhage players who would rather quit than play a different playstyle.

Yeah, they're stupid like that.

YueFei, on 03 March 2021 - 09:12 AM, said:

This is the core issue. You have various folks with different preferred playstyles, and they aren't so heavily invested in the game that they'll just adapt to whatever is strong and keep playing if PGI happens to badly nerf their preferred playstyle.

I've mentioned this before, but I introduced a friend to this game. He played CS:GO competitively, so he's pretty good at FPS, but he wasn't gonna commit tons of effort to MWO, just playing it at a casual level with me. He liked the idea of brawling, so he slapped on AC20 and SRMs.

You know, something I realize with the current revitalizing efforts is external videos explaining the game and teaching newbies new playstyle.

Like why? I mean I get that it's good that they could learn the game, but why is that the game is structured in such a way that they can't instead learn this from playing, but instead has to learn it from a different source?

Are they really so incompetent with pacing and teaching the players new things, that they have to go directly to learn the meta from the top, instead of learning it themselves? Where's the fun it that?

YueFei, on 03 March 2021 - 09:12 AM, said:

Then AC20 velocity got nerfed badly, and SRMs were changed to 1.5 damage per missile.

Wait, when was that? I don't remember SRMs going down 1.5 damage/missile.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 03 March 2021 - 04:15 PM.

[FupDup]

The6thMessenger, on 03 March 2021 - 04:13 PM, said:

Wait, when was that? I don't remember SRMs going down 1.5 damage/missile.

It was back during open beta I think, a very long time ago (in a galaxy not very far away).

[Heavy Money]

I'd just like to point out that we've got another situation here where players have requested conflicting things, and then when a dev comments in support of one of those sides, he gets told that he needs to listen to the player base. Well he was. That's also the problem. Do we need to be so hostile about these Catch-22 issues? We've got a dev coming in and talking about an issue that is brought up regularly by the player base, and saying they want to make a big, difficult change if people think it'll improve the game, and the response is this hostile?

Perhaps we should all save this thread because i'd wager that even if we get the Gular changes, that will not satisfy most of you all. You'll turn around and start going off over some unintended consequence of changes you all demanded.

I think Chris has a good point about certain options being a trap and this being bad for the game. Different engines should have different pros and cons, and some will always be more optimal than others, but it shouldn't be so extreme that choosing the wrong one for a given variant is an instant fail. Durability vs firepower (effectively) is a fine trade off. Its just a matter of how much of each we allow.

I suggested engine crits earlier, but I envisioned it as being less destructive than what we have by default now. As in, at the moment, you are guaranteed X penalty on side torso loss for a LE/CXL engine. I'd support an engine crit system where we reduce that to X/2, but if you get crit, you can take some of that penalty earlier, before full destruction. Yes, that involves adding some RNG. But its still far less of a penalty. Even the worst dice roll you could get would still be a lower penalty than what we have now.

Same with XL engines. Being able to survive a side torso loss with a bigger penalty than a LE is a buff. We don't have to extend engine crits to the CT either. That can stay as is, because that area is fine.

Of course, I don't mind if we just remove the heat spike and remove the instant death too. My main complaint is that the potential to die that quickly isn't fun. But then we'll probably have XL engines being too much of an obvious choice, especially on assault mechs (which barely run them right now.) I suggested the crits because there needs to be some downside, or we'll merely have inverted the engine choices.

[The6thMessenger]

Heavy Money, on 03 March 2021 - 07:33 PM, said:

I'd just like to point out that we've got another situation here where players have requested conflicting things, and then when a dev comments in support of one of those sides, he gets told that he needs to listen to the player base. Well he was. That's also the problem. Do we need to be so hostile about these Catch-22 issues? We've got a dev coming in and talking about an issue that is brought up regularly by the player base, and saying they want to make a big, difficult change if people think it'll improve the game, and the response is this hostile?

Perhaps we should all save this thread because i'd wager that even if we get the Gular changes, that will not satisfy most of you all. You'll turn around and start going off over some unintended consequence of changes you all demanded.

Yes, I do think that there's fundamental differences what the Comp and the casual pug wants. I have criticisms myself with the Gulag.

Spoiler

Like why is the homing weapons mostly nerf? Yeah ATMs do less heat, but they also do less damage -- LRMs have abhorrent spread afterwards, and the SSRMs just got nothing but nerf with their reduction of tracking and no-more bone-tracking. I pity the IS SSRM more because it has less range. The ATM damage nerf is justified sure, but its not like LRMs were a heavy problem, and SSRMs is going to need something else to compensate that direct reduction of effectiveness -- why not pattern IS SSRM to Clan SSRM? Lets face it, Clan SSRM despite being weaker, at least has an edge over standard SRMs because it's longer range. To an IS Streaks vs SRMA, if you can hit enemies at around 250m, you might as well go with SRMs than streaks.

The Ultra ACs still have that problem of RNG, they still have pretty high upfront and sustained DPS, and now they have lower jamming and cooldown chance. This sets the precedent of consistency that I actually want, sure, but can still produce a frustrating troughs of action, or incredibly lopsided crests of damage. That 86% chance of doing double-dps is what the Min-Maxer is banking on, and I find that a bit self-serving.

They still haven't reduced LB20X crit-slots from 11 to 10. PGI ain't never going to put crit-splitting because they are incompetent, there is just little point in taking basically an AC20 spread, and the ability to fire two at the same time barely justifies that.

The LPPCs is balanced around unlimited GH, that means it's going to be tuned for enmasse use, as opposed of the target-demographic -- the lights that only carry so much. It's main competitor of their use is exactly ERML due to tonnage constraints. Nobody will get out of their way to replace 4 ERMLs for 2 LPPCs that are heavier

But despite all of that, I would still push for it -- not that in a sense that the comp should be grateful for my support, that is not nor ever will be the case at all -- but it still good for the game regardless of my criticisms. These little nitpicks, my suggestions, are basically just wishlists. But the Gulag is a good starting point for MWO to heal. The key here is "Compromise", that to my knowledge, the Gulag is already the compromise. And if it's still falling short, we can just adjust it the next balance passes, that's the point of those balance passes.

The point of the Gulag, for me, is for PGI to set a precedent that they will go out of their way to actually fix the damn game, not just return to their old ******** that ran the game down like before.

I wish you just see that.

Heavy Money, on 03 March 2021 - 07:33 PM, said:

I think Chris has a good point about certain options being a trap and this being bad for the game. Different engines should have different pros and cons, and some will always be more optimal than others, but it shouldn't be so extreme that choosing the wrong one for a given variant is an instant fail. Durability vs firepower (effectively) is a fine trade off. Its just a matter of how much of each we allow.

I suggested engine crits earlier, but I envisioned it as being less destructive than what we have by default now. As in, at the moment, you are guaranteed X penalty on side torso loss for a LE/CXL engine. I'd support an engine crit system where we reduce that to X/2, but if you get crit, you can take some of that penalty earlier, before full destruction. Yes, that involves adding some RNG. But its still far less of a penalty. Even the worst dice roll you could get would still be a lower penalty than what we have now.

Same with XL engines. Being able to survive a side torso loss with a bigger penalty than a LE is a buff. We don't have to extend engine crits to the CT either. That can stay as is, because that area is fine.

Of course, I don't mind if we just remove the heat spike and remove the instant death too. My main complaint is that the potential to die that quickly isn't fun. But then we'll probably have XL engines being too much of an obvious choice, especially on assault mechs (which barely run them right now.) I suggested the crits because there needs to be some downside, or we'll merely have inverted the engine choices.

The Problem is coding, that it's a little bit more complicated than simply lose-x-torso then die. Balance pass as a concept isn't bad, but LordNothing's concept, as he described it, seems to be just complicated for the sake of complicated. We don't need any more special mechanics for something that could be easily solved.

Yes, take away the heat spike. If they wanted STD engine to be relevant, give damn Structure bonus, because what is needed is TANGIBLE advantage. If they wanted XL engine to be used on most mechs, not excluding the non XL-Friendly mechs like the King-Crab, just remove the torso-death, replace with reduced heat efficiency. If they want CASE to be more relevant, put crit-damage-reduction that raises effective health.

Those aren't 300-IQ Big-Brain solutions, those are no-brain solutions. But even PGI is just too mired in it's own stupidity and/or bureaucracy to make things happen.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 03 March 2021 - 08:29 PM.

[YueFei]

The6thMessenger, on 03 March 2021 - 04:13 PM, said:

You know, something I realize with the current revitalizing efforts is external videos explaining the game and teaching newbies new playstyle.

Like why? I mean I get that it's good that they could learn the game, but why is that the game is structured in such a way that they can't instead learn this from playing, but instead has to learn it from a different source?

Are they really so incompetent with pacing and teaching the players new things, that they have to go directly to learn the meta from the top, instead of learning it themselves? Where's the fun it that?

Most people who are playing casually are gonna pick a robot that looks cool as hell, and pack it with weapons that suit their playstyle. It does not help player retention if they happen to be one of the unlucky ones who just happened to pick a crappy robot and end up getting dunked on all the time.

Now imagine that the robot and weapons they pick are actually decently effective and fun. Then PGI slams those with a nerf hammer. The casual player isn't even gonna read the patch notes to see what balancing changes happened. They're just gonna fire up the game, wonder why the hell their mech seems to suck so horribly now, and why their guns seem so impotent all of a sudden. Shortly after, they quit playing.

Meanwhile the Competitive Player is just gonna adapt, switch to other mechs and other weapons systems, and still continue dunking on everybody else.

I mean, you have a certain vocal minority of whiners who think certain mechs/weapons are a mere "crutch" for Comp Players, and if that crutch were ever kicked out from under them, then the "truly skilled Mechwarriors" would rise to their rightful place to humble those Comp Players. But those whiners are morons, and it's been proven time and time again, as the Comp Guys just adapt to the new environment and continue to win.

Nerfs to effective mechs and weapons never hurt Comp Players, it only ever screws over the Casual Player.

The6thMessenger, on 03 March 2021 - 04:13 PM, said:

Wait, when was that? I don't remember SRMs going down 1.5 damage/missile.

I couldn't find the exact patch notes where it was changed to 1.5 damage, but I found the patch notes that changed it back to 2.0 damage:
https://mwomercs.com...23-16-jul-2013/

I remember this because I was basically playing the HBK-4SP exclusively, using the classic MedLas+ASRM6 build, and when SRMs were changed to 1.5 damage per missile, I felt that.

Edited by YueFei, 03 March 2021 - 09:05 PM.

[The6thMessenger]

YueFei, on 03 March 2021 - 09:03 PM, said:

Most people who are playing casually are gonna pick a robot that looks cool as hell, and pack it with weapons that suit their playstyle. It does not help player retention if they happen to be one of the unlucky ones who just happened to pick a crappy robot and end up getting dunked on all the time.

Now imagine that the robot and weapons they pick are actually decently effective and fun. Then PGI slams those with a nerf hammer. The casual player isn't even gonna read the patch notes to see what balancing changes happened. They're just gonna fire up the game, wonder why the hell their mech seems to suck so horribly now, and why their guns seem so impotent all of a sudden. Shortly after, they quit playing.

Yeah, its kind of sad that they do that. They have a perfectly good mechanism to ease players into the hook of the game, but just destroy it with nerfs.

YueFei, on 03 March 2021 - 09:03 PM, said:

Meanwhile the Competitive Player is just gonna adapt, switch to other mechs and other weapons systems, and still continue dunking on everybody else.

I mean, you have a certain vocal minority of whiners who think certain mechs/weapons are a mere "crutch" for Comp Players, and if that crutch were ever kicked out from under them, then the "truly skilled Mechwarriors" would rise to their rightful place to humble those Comp Players. But those whiners are morons, and it's been proven time and time again, as the Comp Guys just adapt to the new environment and continue to win.

I honestly haven't heard a "crutch" for comp players, just the homing weapons as crutch for new ones, or people that have their aim skill under developed.

YueFei, on 03 March 2021 - 09:03 PM, said:

Nerfs to effective mechs and weapons never hurt Comp Players, it only ever screws over the Casual Player.

True.

[MyriadDigits]

Heavy Money, on 03 March 2021 - 07:33 PM, said:

I'd just like to point out that we've got another situation here where players have requested conflicting things, and then when a dev comments in support of one of those sides, he gets told that he needs to listen to the player base. Well he was. That's also the problem. Do we need to be so hostile about these Catch-22 issues? We've got a dev coming in and talking about an issue that is brought up regularly by the player base, and saying they want to make a big, difficult change if people think it'll improve the game, and the response is this hostile?

Perhaps we should all save this thread because i'd wager that even if we get the Gular changes, that will not satisfy most of you all. You'll turn around and start going off over some unintended consequence of changes you all demanded.

Players always request conflicting things. Even those of us wanting the Gulag proposal accepted (for instance, myself and 6th), don't agree with every single change within. As I understand it even the Gulag itself wasn't unanimous with the values that made it to the final proposal.

The issue however comes down to the majority. Alongside not agreeing on anything a large part of why that is is because most players aren't looking beyond their own cockpit. We've got people asking for blanket nerfs on lights because they main assaults and don't know how to fight back. People asking for AC2 to lose a ton because they want to use ACs on small mechs, without even a fragment of a thought spared for how such a change would affect AC2 boating. People asking for missiles to lose the min range because they lack the positioning skill to work around it. Some people are out there asking for changes based solely on "its stats are different in tabletop". So on, and so on.

Gulag, if nothing else, made efforts to consider balance from multiple perspectives. The casual and the competitive. The new and the old. The light and the assault. Gulag values aren't made in a vacuum, they are made with every other suggested change, to mechs, quirks, and weapons considered. Does this make it perfect? Absolutely not. However, it puts it leagues above literally every other suggestion out there.

Now sure, you could say the point of the balance thread is for PGI to in essence put together their own Gulag, but the issue there lies in the fact that PGI has time and again including in recent months demonstrated they are out of touch to an incredible degree. On top of that, nearly every suggestion made in the balance thread is made in a vacuum. So we'd have people that don't truly understand how their game is played, making changes based on suggestions with little to no thought on how such changes would impact the rest of the game, and that my friend, is a recipe for disaster. Might as well leave balance to a room full of monkeys and keyboards.