30 replies to this topic

[The Basilisk]

Andrewlik, on 13 March 2021 - 05:14 PM, said:

(...)
How is this game balanced?

First things first: Wellcome to MWO
I will try to ignore the ranting of some of the guys above and try to answer your questions step by step

Andrewlik, on 13 March 2021 - 05:14 PM, said:

What is stopping people from always taking the maximum tonnage possible? (outside of personal preference and variety)

Bigger Mechs are....well bigger and slower...not only slower in getting anywhere but less maneuverable in therms of overall dexterity i.e. its harder to hit anything and bring your firepower to bear.
Also your Hitboxes are considerably larger, so your more in armor is a quite relative thing.
You can kill an 100T mech with 230 to 250 dmg by concentrating on his center Torso but you may need the same amount of damage to kill a fast medium where you can not concentrate your fire that much.
So piloting an Assault in MWO and beeing worth anything to your team may be quite a bit more challanging than piloting a mobile heavy or medium.

Andrewlik, on 13 March 2021 - 05:14 PM, said:

Clan vs IS balance? (weren't the clans just technologically superior in every way, and just lost via logistics?)

While the Clans where technologicaly quite superior in BT but hindered by their number and take on warfare as a thing of honor and measure of prowes between warriors in a warrior society this situation would have been very problematic to recreate in MWO.
MWOs approach to Clan tech is giving them a different flavor for their weapon systems than the corresponding systems on IS side. IS ER Large Laser is heavier and bigger than its Clan counterpart while the Clan Laser has higher heat, longer burntime and a lower Ghost Heat threashhold (i.e. you can fire 3 ISL-Lasers vs 2 CL-Lasers without getting extra heat)

Andrewlik, on 13 March 2021 - 05:14 PM, said:

How does matchmaker work? Tonnage v tonnage? account for player skill?

It Quickplay it uses a PSR system that tries to match players of comparative skill Levels (tiers have something to do with it but not only) against each other.
You should realy not bother with it.

Andrewlik, on 13 March 2021 - 05:14 PM, said:

Quirks are a balancing factor when comparing mechs in the same bracket, that much I know, but what's the philosophy there?
Flavor vs competitiveness?

Quirks are used to blance Mechs in the same weight class and ore to compensate for their....lets say eclectic loadout.
Remember since we are in an semi newtonian shooter the physical placing of weapons and the outer appearance of a Mech does has consequences. Armweapons on humanoid Mechs for example can be a great disadvantage when it comes to sniping due to their low position, also the inability to field more than a certain number of weapons of one type may be taken into account as well as the area of armor a mech has to present to an enemy to be able to engage said enemy.
Compare a Marauder and a Black Knight. Both are Energy heavy Mechs with comparable speed and tech level. But one is humanoid the other is avian. Marauder can easiely shrug of lots of dmg by just micro twisting its torso and distributing the incoming fire ofer its complete upper armor.
A Black Knight with its large flat front can not do that.

Andrewlik, on 13 March 2021 - 05:14 PM, said:

Pay to win elements? (pay to win, and not just pay-to-skip-the-grind. Pay-to-win as in premium mechs being objectively better than regular mechs, like World of Tanks)

There are no. Only thing you can buy is Hero (I'll count Loyality and early adopter towards hero) or Champion Mechs.
While Hero Mechs have unusual hardpoint layouts (often not that good ones), special paint jobs and give you a bonus on C-bills per match, Champion mechs are standart variants with a bonus to XP generation. But both Mechtypes do not get you any direct advantage in gameplay.

Andrewlik, on 13 March 2021 - 05:14 PM, said:

Meta? (on that note - the Piranha? 12 machine guns (according to Sarna)?)

Basic logic mostly.
- Pinpoint frontload dmg will yield lower exposure times so you deal may dmg whil not beeing hit that much.
- Having high mounted hardpoints is an other thing.
- A decent mixture of speed, resilience and firepower is the next thing.

And further down the list there are subtones like obstruction through getting fired upon from certain types of weapons like rotary ACs and chainfired ACs or Clan LRMs...but only lower tier players will fall for that.
ECM can also be a large advantage but also mostly against uncommunicative or inexperienced players.

Andrewlik, on 13 March 2021 - 05:14 PM, said:

Credit making? I seem to be making 150-300k bills no matter the mech, no matter the tonnage, so is there no repair/ammunition cost?

At the moment you will get your cadet bonus. This is a diminishing bonus you get for the first 30ish matches to get you up to speed. Then C-bills will be payed for certain deeds you commit on the battleground depending from the game mode (skirmish, conquest, assault and domination)
There is no ammo and repair cost...they experimented with it in closed beta but ditched it.

Andrewlik, on 13 March 2021 - 05:14 PM, said:

(...)
I currently have a cyclops that I switch between LRM/MRM/SRM boat builds, a K2 catapult (my love from HBS BT) that I swap builds with constantly, and a locust I bought b/c it was cheap, and also the free huntsman. Anything I "should" be grinding towards?

Which Cyclops?
A CatK2 was allways a quite decent mech that is sadly not seen all to often anymore due to the low placing of its primarily used hardpoitns i.e. the balistic hardpoints in its torso. While it is not inherently bad there are simply more powerful or more specialized chassis out there now. Dual UAC10, while doing the poking game, will still work sufficiently good. (No PPCs in your arms wont get you far cuz they get shot of too fast by any moderately good player)

If you want a good versatile clan heavy go for a Hellbringer, Ebon Jaguar or SunSpider. When it comes to IS Heavys take a look into the Warhammer line for either dual UAC10 or laser vomit, or for laser vomit Grashopper with jump jets, or Marauders for dakka and lasers.

Thats it from me. Good luck and see you on the field.

[Horseman]

Andrewlik, on 13 March 2021 - 05:14 PM, said:

What is stopping people from always taking the maximum tonnage possible? (outside of personal preference and variety)

Tonnage doesn't directly translate to performance, and assault mech pay for their armor and firepower with very low mobility (some worse than others). In some modes you can just go for it (eg: Siege Defense), in others less so. In Solaris, with its' division system, the mechs are grouped into separate categories so you're not facing a Locust in your Annihilator.

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Clan vs IS balance? (weren't the clans just technologically superior in every way, and just lost via logistics?)

Firepower vs durability. And yes, clans were. In MWO, not so much.

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How does matchmaker work? Tonnage v tonnage? account for player skill?

Combination of pilot rating and weight class (rather than actual tonnage).

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Quirks are a balancing factor when comparing mechs in the same bracket, that much I know, but what's the philosophy there? Flavor vs competitiveness?

Competitiveness tends to be accidental.

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Pay to win elements? (pay to win, and not just pay-to-skip-the-grind. Pay-to-win as in premium mechs being objectively better than regular mechs, like World of Tanks)

There's a handful of premium mechs that are "better" than non-premium mechs in narrow applications - the IV4, Virago, Sleipnir and Scorch are pretty much "it" (Direwolf Ultraviolet isn't used directly but some of its' pods can be put on a non-premium variant, if that counts), and given the fairly generous event payouts they're still reasonably doable for a F2P player. Even so, there are some non-premium substitutes that you can readily obtain.

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Meta?

See Grimmechs.

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(on that note - the Piranha? 12 machine guns (according to Sarna)?)

Son of a ***** when played right. Dies like a ***** when played wrong.

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Credit making? I seem to be making 150-300k bills no matter the mech, no matter the tonnage, so is there no repair/ammunition cost?

Repair & Rearm was in the game way back in the beta. It was universally hated and got pulled. The only recurring cost are consumables (coolshots, UAVs, arty/air strikes), which can still put a dent in your earnings if you overuse them.
Don't worry, you'll spend plenty on getting more mechs and kitting them out.

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I come from a thorough background of World of Tanks and left due to overly aggressive marketing and a power-crept meta that made all the tanks I wanted to play feel obsolete, and the credit making system discouraged me from even playing the high tiers I wanted to try
(Not to mention that balance is out the window)

MWO doesn't have anything like WOT's vehicle unlock system. If you have the currency for the mech, you can buy it.
Eventually you select mechs based on how well they match specific builds you'd like to use, making the progression almost completely lateral in the long run.

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I currently have a cyclops that I switch between LRM/MRM/SRM boat builds, a K2 catapult (my love from HBS BT) that I swap builds with constantly, and a locust I bought b/c it was cheap, and also the free huntsman. Anything I "should" be grinding towards?

Bushwacker X1, Mad Cat Mk II B, Hellbringer Prime would probably be my recommendations.

Edited by Horseman, 16 March 2021 - 03:57 PM.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Andrewlik, on 13 March 2021 - 05:14 PM, said:

Honest question from a new-ish player, not a rant post.
I have played MW5 and HBS BT extensively but I am new to MWO itself

How is this game balanced?

What is stopping people from always taking the maximum tonnage possible? (outside of personal preference and variety)
Clan vs IS balance? (weren't the clans just technologically superior in every way, and just lost via logistics?)
How does matchmaker work? Tonnage v tonnage? account for player skill?
Quirks are a balancing factor when comparing mechs in the same bracket, that much I know, but what's the philosophy there? Flavor vs competitiveness?
Pay to win elements? (pay to win, and not just pay-to-skip-the-grind. Pay-to-win as in premium mechs being objectively better than regular mechs, like World of Tanks)
Meta? (on that note - the Piranha? 12 machine guns (according to Sarna)?)
Credit making? I seem to be making 150-300k bills no matter the mech, no matter the tonnage, so is there no repair/ammunition cost?

I come from a thorough background of World of Tanks and left due to overly aggressive marketing and a power-crept meta that made all the tanks I wanted to play feel obsolete, and the credit making system discouraged me from even playing the high tiers I wanted to try
(Not to mention that balance is out the window)

I currently have a cyclops that I switch between LRM/MRM/SRM boat builds, a K2 catapult (my love from HBS BT) that I swap builds with constantly, and a locust I bought b/c it was cheap, and also the free huntsman. Anything I "should" be grinding towards?

Everyone has already addressed your questions so I'll just add some context as a long-time player.

Since this game started, Pay-to-win has never really been a thing. So that's 7-8 years of never falling into that by PGI, thankfully.

C-bill generation was abysmal in the early days. Repair and Rearm was present for like 2 months when I joined in closed beta and removed because it just didn't add any fun value to the game and worked as a punishment and could lead to bad player behavior to save on repairs. PGI has had plenty of missteps over the years and a lot of people might have become bitter about this or that. Take it with a grain of salt and let YOUR experiences dictate your impression of them. I've never spent a lot of money on this game, so don't feel you have to. They've expressed a desire to revamp the store, but have no specifics for us yet. If you feel like dropping a little money, that's cool. If not, that's cool too. If you decide to and want advice on a solid purchase, feel free to ask and we'll tell you what we think is a good value or not. Don't ever feel like you have to buy something to be competitive. Buy it because you're having fun and feel it's a good buy.

As for obsolesce--the way development went is that we only started with 8 mech chassis when I first logged in. Now we have like 100. I don't even know. As each one came out, it tended to mix up the meta and many of the later mechs firmly supplanted earlier chassis. You still see some of them, but mechs that were once great, like the Jenner, are basically non-existent today. But, we've had no new mechs for over a year and a half and I don't see PGI adding a lot more in the future, certainly not at the rate we had in the past. So just know that whatever mechs you own today may become better or worse in the future. As with any game really. P.S. I still run my K2 every so often. Still one of my favorite mechs since purchasing it in 2013 or 2014! I tend to run dual AC 10s. You should check out the Jester hero mech. Another favorite of mine.

Many players complain about the match maker. Mainly because most matches seem to end rather lopsided with kills. Yes, groups were merged into solo queue so there's only one quick play queue and the matchmaker is trying to balance a number of variables but it's constrained by the number of players in the pool to choose from at that moment which isn't the highest number ever. Love it or hate it, it's what we have. It's never going to be perfect. At least you should theoretically end up on the winning side about half the time, but your mileage may vary and you could very well end up losing 10 times in a row. That's not necessarily because the MM sucks, it's just how it is right now.

There's a lot of "other" discussion in this thread that really doesn't belong here in New Player help, but I think we all want a game that is playable and accessible for most people. Opinions are varied and each one is valid to the person who has it.

[Ekson Valdez]

Please stay constructive and try to adress the OP's question. Don't derail this thread for personal discussions.
Thank you.

[Alexander of Macedon]

Andrewlik, on 13 March 2021 - 05:14 PM, said:

Anything I "should" be grinding towards?

The specific answers have mostly already been posted, but I'll add my 2p to this.

Watch youtube content and play trial 'mechs. Think about what you enjoy from multiple angles. For playstyle, do you like peeking/poptarting, skirmishing, brawling, or scouting? Do you prefer a weapon type, weight class or specific 'mech chassis? Once you've worked out a few ideas for what sort of 'mech you think you'd enjoy playing, search around and ask for chassis that are good for what you want to do/builds that are good on the chassis you're interested in.

Almost any chassis can be viable in good hands with the right build, but there is certainly a range in terms of how easy it is to do well. Light 'mechs are statistically more difficult to do well in since they are more demanding on multiple angles of player skill. Assault 'mechs are similar but not as tricky; their main difficulty is that if you don't have map knowledge or game sense it's easy to get into bad situations that you can't run away from. The most consistent noncontributing 'mechs are lights and assaults driven by people who made bad judgement calls and died without doing anything.

My personal suggestion would be to find a couple solid heavy builds for decently fast and durable chassis that you enjoy and perform well with, once you get one or two of those running you can always go back to them to grind c-bills and skill points.

The real advantage of premium 'mechs is that if you find one you enjoy that can mount a solid build, you can drastically boost your c-bill income. One of my favorites is the CTF-IM, the Ilya-Muromets; I bought it years and years ago, slapped the classic 3x uAC/5 build on, and I've been running it like that for consistent 600-1k damage games ever since. I came back after a year or two away and needed something to grind my rank back up -- lo and behold, the thing is still a monster.

That's a good example of what I'm talking about. The CTF is far from meta, has awkward hardpoints, and in this case I'm using a positively ancient build. Nevertheless, it's durable, fast, does decent damage, and most importantly, I'm comfortable with it. If you see a strong meta build that you don't mesh with, don't waste time on it. As long as you're not running an absolute garbage build, a decent heavy with a decent setup that you are good with is all you need to get your feet on the ground.

The main thing to steer clear of is tabletop/HBS-style JOAT builds. Any time I see someone with a kitchen sink/"one of everything" weapon list I will either ignore them if there are better targets or pressure and kill them if there aren't, since those sorts of builds are bad at all ranges and are usually put together by people who aren't very good at the game. The most important thing in that regard is for your weapons and the 'mech behind them to have a coherent purpose -- this includes range, firing pattern, role, &c. The absolute most you should mix is having a primary/secondary setup, i.e. ATMs + heavy slas, AC20s + mlas. Ideally you have a bunch of weapons with similar ranges and roles that can all be fired together without issues. If you're walking around with an LRM5, an AC10, 3x slas, an MRM20, and a SSRM4, you're barely better than a training ground target.

Edited by Alexander of Macedon, 16 March 2021 - 03:49 PM.

[Horseman]

TheCaptainJZ, on 15 March 2021 - 03:51 PM, said:

As for obsolesce--the way development went is that we only started with 8 mech chassis when I first logged in. Now we have like 100. I don't even know.

106 by my count, with some 619 variants (ignoring the Champions and Specials).

[TheCaptainJZ]

Horseman, on 16 March 2021 - 04:00 PM, said:

106 by my count, with some 619 variants (ignoring the Champions and Specials).

Which is an impressive number of chassis and variants. Too many to give all but a few a unique purpose.

[SnagaDance]

TheCaptainJZ, on 17 March 2021 - 03:57 AM, said:

Which is an impressive number of chassis and variants. Too many to give all but a few a unique purpose.

Weapon hardpoint sizes would have helped in this regard. With the added danger of making some mechs even more/less meta of course.

[Gagis]

With a hardpoint based system there isn't a real reason for variant chassis to exist. Theres only so far you can try to stretch viability. I suspect they are like that mostly to bloat sizes of mech packs sold.

If I made a MWO2 or something like that, I'd bind hardpoints to chassis and have variants exist as just prebuilt loadouts on that chassis.

Like, if you buy an ANH-1A you get an ANH chassis, 4AC10 and whatever other junk the mech comes with. If you buy an ANH-1E you get an ANH chassis, 4PPC and whatever other junk the mech comes with. The ANH object in these being identical and having the hardpoints that allow all canon variants to be built on it.

Stock loadouts/variants would be pretty much garbage compared to anything players can make in the mech lab, but thats how they are in MWO now, in other Battletech-derived games and Battletech itself too either way.

Edited by Gagis, 18 March 2021 - 01:30 AM.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Gagis, on 18 March 2021 - 01:29 AM, said:

With a hardpoint based system there isn't a real reason for variant chassis to exist. Theres only so far you can try to stretch viability. I suspect they are like that mostly to bloat sizes of mech packs sold.

If I made a MWO2 or something like that, I'd bind hardpoints to chassis and have variants exist as just prebuilt loadouts on that chassis.

Like, if you buy an ANH-1A you get an ANH chassis, 4AC10 and whatever other junk the mech comes with. If you buy an ANH-1E you get an ANH chassis, 4PPC and whatever other junk the mech comes with. The ANH object in these being identical and having the hardpoints that allow all canon variants to be built on it.

Stock loadouts/variants would be pretty much garbage compared to anything players can make in the mech lab, but thats how they are in MWO now, in other Battletech-derived games and Battletech itself too either way.

They limited variants in much that way in MW5 and lots of players install a mod that unlocks it (so I've heard--haven't bought it yet). The rationale makes sense, but players like to fully customize mechs.

Originally in MWO, the variants made sense because we started with only a small number of them and they didn't really anticipate how development was going to go and just needed to get a game developed far enough to sell as a product. It became clear pretty quick that making more mechs was going to be the main sales avenue. Originally it was MC to buy premium time or mechs or convert XP. Nothing really exciting to buy. The Phoenix pack was the first true pack after Founders. And also the Mastery system back then forced you to buy mechbays and 3 variants of a mech to level it up. You could do this with one chassis without spending any money, but you sorta had to put some money down in the game to go much farther unless you wanted to sell your mechs after mastering them. It is much more generous now.

[Tarl Cabot]

TheCaptainJZ, on 17 March 2021 - 03:57 AM, said:

Which is an impressive number of chassis and variants. Too many to give all but a few a unique purpose.

Even that, many would still be bleh..and primarily due to arm-mounted weapons, esp humanoid mechs, which shoot from the groin region. Some have made fun of mechs running around like mummies but in my version only one arm at a time could be raised to fire a weapon and that would have a "timer" before it resets to its resting/default position.