39 replies to this topic

[CoffeeKitty]

Seriously, i get that the game needs to balance around tonnage but one thing that constantly grinds me and pushes me away from mwo year after year is the fact that somehow, every single mech i personally select is the worst possible mech configuration for the map im playing. and if i try to play a generalist mech, i have a lot less fun and every build is so homogeneous that the game gets too repetitive too quickly. i think this is a big reason why i have never once found myself enjoying any specialist roles, or even enjoying LRM fits. contrast that to MWLL where scouting, narc/tagging and support roles are the exclusive role that i play due to how enjoyable it is to coordinate with my team and support them. btw this is a BIG BIG reason for why i adore FP. i HATE that FP is dead and i can rarely ever get matches, because this issue is not present whatsoever in FP. both the drop deck system in its entirety and the fact that you can know what map you're going to play before you configure your DD is a huge plus. i'd kill for this level of info in QP. honestly i want QP to just be replaced by FP alltogether because the dropdeck system is just superior and matches are way more enjoyable for me personally, but that's a different point entirely.

in QP i've given up on ever running tag, ams, narc, ecm/ewar, dedicated scouting and sniping fits, and now recently i've been trying to play brawling fits with all the new changes and like clockwork every time i select a brawling mech i get thrown on polar highlands.

it's irritating and im convinced like 50% of poorly balanced matches have little to do with tonnage discrepancies or skill variance but rather one team getting a company configuration that is more appropriate to the theater they drop into.

I can't be alone in this. in MWLL and MW5 you know exactly what type of temperature, clime and physical layout of a map before you select a mech, and as you should! imagine a realistic miltiary environment where a soldier doesn't even have the most basic idea of what kind of environment they're dropping into. its unfathomable, you create and use the tools for the job, and while i understand that MWO has a fundementally flawed design in this regard, i remain unconvinced that nothing can be done to address it.

if it's physically impossible back-end wise to change the configuration of a mech after the match has started then sure fine i guess this isnt possible, but i honestly want so badly to have something as simple as "select x loadout". you know the XML files that were added in 2018? make use of them!

this would encourage post-drop ingame coordination and synergy as well, which would serve massively in reducing the steamroll effect that coordinated lances have over QP. better players tend to run more generalist mechs and coordinated lances have a statistically larger control over the mapvote, which just exacerbates the issues i've been mentioning.

i want to be able to play a mech like a marauder with erppcs and then we drop into solaris and i decide "oh hey this might be a better situation if i change to a snub brawl" or "hey my team could use a tag so let me equip my variant with tag"

i dont know, im screaming in the wind at this point, if this feature was possible to add it probably would have been done so already, im just so beyond tired of having poor quality matches that every sinlge one of them can be attributed towards maps having such drastically different design that the second one my mech doesnt work for gets voted for i want to honestly just leave the game. it's really disheartening to want to try a fit out, and then have to sit behind a rock for 5 minutes because your 400m fit cant function on a map people voted for 3 times in a row, then the very next game you say okay screw this im going for a proper balance loadout, you get mining collective and cant get a good angle because it's nascar brawl time and you cant contribute effectively because your mech is once again the wrong mech for the job.


i think this is the single biggest flaw with MWO and the single reason why i, personally, find myself not sticking around very much after each update.

/rant

Edited by CoffeeKitty, 04 May 2021 - 03:02 PM.

[Vlad Ward]

Imagine, if you would, a world where teams use the 60 second ready time to configure lances, loadouts, and general strategy.

Lack of Mech Select after team formation is bad. Fix it.

I honestly don't even care if some diehards insist on selecting maps last. Team synergy is more important than Mech/Map synergy by a factor of approx 18 quadrillion.

[RJF Volkodav]

Not 500$ but still worth 30$ as much as your precious * MW5, PGI. Now we have "tactical shooter" which do not allow you to choose mech for a tactical situation (map)... This game could be much more interesting if we could take loadouts for a map we know. Easiest solution is to give an ability to choose mech within your preselected weight class after the map selection, as long as matchmaker use your weight class to match (if it even does).

Edited by RJF Volkodav, 04 May 2021 - 03:08 PM.

[CoffeeKitty]

Vlad Ward, on 04 May 2021 - 03:01 PM, said:

Imagine, if you would, a world where teams use the 60 second ready time to configure lances, loadouts, and general strategy.

Lack of Mech Select after team formation is bad. Fix it.

I honestly don't even care if some diehards insist on selecting maps last. Team synergy is more important than Mech/Map synergy by a factor of approx 18 quadrillion.

i would even prefer them to increase the prematch time by a bit in this case, but i dont think anyone would really complain, and i agree with everything you said here, the synergy and teamwork is more important than map selection by a lot. in a perfect world the map selection would be last, but im trying to suggest a way to implement this with as little backend development as possible.

also your namesake offends me <3

RJF Volkodav, on 04 May 2021 - 03:03 PM, said:

Not 500$ but still worth 30$ as much as your precious * MW5, PGI. Now we have "tactical shooter" which do not allow you to choose mech for a tactical situation (map)... This game could be much more interesting if we could take loadouts for a map we know. Easiest solution is to give an ability to choose mech within your preselected weight class as long as matchmaker use your weight class to match (if it even does).

precisely, im not sure how much backend would be needed in this case, but having a choice of mech with a weight value would work too, or even weight class.

Honestly lets just make this **** world of tanks where you get 4 spawns, and you use the dropdeck system in QP too lmao.

but alas the only thing i can think of that would be economocial to pgi, while still being revolutionary, would be to load the mech variant you queued up for, but then allow the XML loading for config during the readyup process, so you'd chose from a preset of loadouts for the mech and the skill tree you made, no further changes would be needed, only a simple dropdown list to load the xml file, to re-run the validation checks added for the loadout files, and to apply them before actors are spawned (even though im 99% sure they are spawned and configured before the readyscreen even pops up)

also im not exaggerating, pgi if you implement this i have a 500$ check waiting with your name on it, ill do it. it's worth way more than some gold paint lmao

Edited by CoffeeKitty, 04 May 2021 - 03:12 PM.

[Monkey Lover]

I hated this in CW all it does it make 24 meta mechs in every map.

[CoffeeKitty]

Monkey Lover, on 04 May 2021 - 03:22 PM, said:

I hated this in CW all it does it make 24 meta mechs in every map.

i feel like this is a bit of a bad faith argument whether or not you realize it. your argument against this suggestion rests on the assertion that the status quo is superior to CW because you encounter more mech variety, but that variety is both lopsided in balance, and comes at the expense of the players who deviate from perceived optimal and generalist loadouts, and at the cost of the overall match quality. your assertion that giving players more choice in their mech loadouts would result in stagnation baffles me, there's a reason why i run a tcomp6 and clan probe ERPPC cou-e in my dropdeck but would never in a million years bring that out in QP. there's a reason why every single one of my mechs in my dropdeck deviate wildly from one another, and from what is QP meta. im not alone in this, there's a reason grimmechs has a "specialist" tier list for CW. things like 4xLL tcomp8 stalkers would never work in QP unless you know what map it is before you slot that bad boy lol.

so if the best players in the game are to be believed, the agency afforded to players would actually result in a much larger variety of better equipped mechs, and more specialized ones. not homogenized "every mech is the same"

if anything, this change would result in more variety of mechs between different maps, and a "oligopoly" of desired meta configurations for each mech and tonnage range due to people not needing to pigeonhole a mech loadout that can function on every map to some degree.

statistical analysis of weapon and loadout performances would have far less margin of error as well.

Honestly it sounds to me like you want the status quo over (either the option for players to control what mechs they have before the map is chosen, or over their ability to alleviate the status quo somewhat by changing their loadout of their selected mech slightly before match starts) for the sole reason that you want players who are not equipped properly to handle the map and engagement profile, matches with and against you...

that's an inherently unfair system that is not only incredibly random but also really biased towards players who play in groups.

so the only way i can conceive that you think quality of matches are better without these choices are because you win more, and that's an opinion you're allowed to have, but i do not think it represents good game design, and leads to you being put at an unfair advantage over other players who simply got unlucky, or potentially losing matches because your team had poorly configured mechs matched against well configured mechs due to bad luck.

Either way, it's bad if it helps you win, and its bad if it contributes to a loss. competitive games are zero sum, in order for one team to win, the other must lose, so keep that in mind, yeah?

Edited by CoffeeKitty, 04 May 2021 - 03:43 PM.

[Leone]

Monkey Lover, on 04 May 2021 - 03:22 PM, said:

I hated this in CW all it does it make 24 meta mechs in every map.

Really? Weird. I've never noticed that. In fact, I'd think more folk would choose meta mechs when unsure what map they get instead. Me and mine rather enjoy getting to pick and choose their mechs based on the terrain and the game mode. Granted my team tends to not care about the meta as much as making sure we've got a parity of speeds.

Slow mechs tend to miss out on the brawl after all.

Still, much as I hate the added times between drops map selection already adds, I could seen the added value of mech selection as well. Granted I don't play much quickplay.

~Leone, of Kell's Commandos.

Edited by Leone, 04 May 2021 - 03:46 PM.

[w0qj]

THIS... OP's original proposal at one-off US$500, and please add:

Please also add in one(1) year's worth of Platinum Premium Time for free, consisting of:
~Exclusive Gold/Metallic paint job for all your owned mechs, only during Platinum Premium Time
~Unlock *all* camo / colors / cockpit items / warhorns, again only during Platinum Premium Time
~50% Off on all MC/CBills consumables
~Anything else you can think of?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Platinum Premium Time = US$160/year at regular price

Existing Premium Time = US$100/year at regular price

[HammerMaster]

No.
That's pay to win.
Also, only Omni-Mechs have that ability. Run one of those and you can drop one of the published variants. A,C, etc.
If everyone wasn't running their own special snowflake or meta build you'd have Stock which in many cases have weapons for most ranges. This is NOT looked down upon as the "kitchen sink". It just was.

Edited by HammerMaster, 05 May 2021 - 07:01 AM.

[Sjorpha]

I would definitely be against it as a paid feature, no p2w elements in the game please.

But I agree it would be much better if you could choose mech after knowing map and mode, I think this would lead to way more teamwork and strategic matches.

Maybe only allow switching within the weight class though, so the whole team can't switch to assaults and stuff like that.

[pbiggz]

To the people opposing this because they think he wants it as a paid feature;

are you actually children? he's being sarcastic. he's saying he'd give up his left *** to get a feature in the game that we should have had the whole time not that he wants to pay for it while you cant.

HammerMaster, on 05 May 2021 - 06:59 AM, said:

No.
Also, only Omni-Mechs have that ability. Run one of those and you can drop one of the published variants. A,C, etc.

meaningless. this isn't battletech, where you wait for repairs and configuration changes to be done. This is a shooter game that happens in real time. Put your tabletop nonsense away.

Monkey Lover, on 04 May 2021 - 03:22 PM, said:

I hated this in CW all it does it make 24 meta mechs in every map.

As opposed to 24 meta mechs in every map? Every game has a meta. Every change will give rise to a new meta. You cant avoid it, and seriously, your answer to every proposed improvement to the game cant be "bUt tHe mEtA iS oPpReSsIvE". You're like a NIMBY with mechs.

Seriously. We have not had nice things for so long that whenever someone comes along to suggest something nice, you guys bomb the thread with mechdad tabletop complaints and fearmongering about meta mechs, then turn around later and complain about how the meta is boring, theres no diversity in maps, too much nascarring, and short match times.

The answers are in front of you. They've been repeated many times. A pre-match lobby. Dropdecks in quickplay. Respawning in quickplay. Amplified weather and environment conditions. Rotating spawn and objective locations.

We should all be asking for all of these things, not crying about how if something changes, then there might be a meta!?

Edited by pbiggz, 05 May 2021 - 07:37 AM.

[Anjian]

Vlad Ward, on 04 May 2021 - 03:01 PM, said:

Imagine, if you would, a world where teams use the 60 second ready time to configure lances, loadouts, and general strategy.

Lack of Mech Select after team formation is bad. Fix it.

***

/rant

There are games where you can pick mechs/tanks/planes/ships/vehicles, you don't need 60 seconds for it. When you see a map, you know by experience and instinct to pick which one in your hanger. Everyone can already drop within 5 to 10 seconds if they already know what to do and has preselected hangers for it.

One issue with this game is that one map favors one build. Instead, a map should have terrain features that make good use of brawlers, snipers, tanks, support, and runners all in one match. So not everyone has to drop with the same metabuild. Some can drop as runners, some can drop as brawlers, some can drop as snipers. The key point is that the map design should make every role and potential build relevant.

As the match progresses, there are also phases in the match, which you can illustrate as the start, where everyone is feeling each other out, the middle where it begins to get interesting, and the end where everyone is all out and desperate for the win. This can also result in different mech drops per phases if the game happens to have respawns and is objective based.

So there are two levels of selection:

Selection by the map and by your initial team make up.

Selection as the match progresses, picking the best mech for the current stiuation.

Edited by Anjian, 05 May 2021 - 07:32 AM.

[pbiggz]

Anjian, on 05 May 2021 - 07:28 AM, said:

There are games where you can pick mechs/tanks/planes/ships/vehicles, you don't need 60 seconds for it. When you see a map, you know by experience and instinct to pick which one in your hanger. Everyone can already drop within 5 to 10 seconds if they already know what to do and has preselected hangers for it.

One issue with this game is that one map favors one build. Instead, a map should have terrain features that make good use of brawlers, snipers, tanks, support, and runners all in one match. So not everyone has to drop with the same metabuild. Some can drop as runners, some can drop as brawlers, some can drop as snipers. The key point is that the map design should make every role and potential build relevant.

As the match progresses, there are also phases in the match, which you can illustrate as the start, where everyone is feeling each other out, the middle where it begins to get interesting, and the end where everyone is all out and desperate for the win. This can also result in different mech drops per phases if the game happens to have respawns and is objective based.

So there are two levels of selection:

Selection by the map and by your initial team make up.

Selection as the match progresses, picking the best mech for the current stiuation.

map conditions my dude, and weather conditions.

environment heat is currently nerfed down to like 5% of its former effect. With a match lobby, and a bit of info on conditions, you could decide whether a storm will disrupt your sensors and LOS, incentivizing brawler builds with ECM and beagle active probe, or whether the match will be on a map with higher heat, incentivizing cooler builds, etc.

Its another aspect of mechwarrior that is completely missing from this game.

[Sjorpha]

pbiggz, on 05 May 2021 - 07:27 AM, said:

As opposed to 24 meta mechs in every map? Every game has a meta. Every change will give rise to a new meta. You cant avoid it, and seriously, your answer to every proposed improvement to the game cant be "bUt tHe mEtA iS oPpReSsIvE". You're like a NIMBY with mechs.

Seriously. We have not had nice things for so long that whenever someone comes along to suggest something nice, you guys bomb the thread with mechdad tabletop complaints and fearmongering about meta mechs, then turn around later and complain about how the meta is boring, theres no diversity in maps, too much nascarring, and short match times.

The answers are in front of you. They've been repeated many times. A pre-match lobby. Dropdecks in quickplay. Respawning in quickplay. Amplified weather and environment conditions. Rotating spawn and objective locations.

We should all be asking for all of these things, not crying about how if something changes, then there might be a meta!?

I agree.

Also the meta would probably be more diverse with this feature, not less. Right now the most specialised builds are bad in QP because of the risk of getting the wrong map and mode for them, which pushes the meta towards more generalist builds. With a lobby you'd see a lot more interesting builds because it would now pay off to really build something for a specific map and mode.

I can understand some people not liking it though. If you don't like how people choose good mechs for the map and mode in FP you probably won't like it in QP either. I love it in FP so I'll love it in QP, but I understand some people feel differently about that.

Another great thing about it is the teamplay aspect, you could suggest on comms during the lobby that everyone goes brawly or whatever and really play as a team sometimes by choice rather than by accident. That would be awesome.

Edited by Sjorpha, 05 May 2021 - 08:00 AM.

[kapusta11]

I'd pay $500 for a move to Unreal engine. Half of the game is already ported (MW5) and Unreal is alot easier to work with.

[Wolfos31]

It'd be kind of neat if this feature was created. But I don't really care if it never comes about either.

Hate to say it but anytime someone complains about this I tend to think they're not very good at working their mech & the map to their benefit. Sure I'm frustrated when I'm in a sniping mech and the map is Solaris City, or I'm in a dual UAC20 brawler and the map is Polar Highlands. But the challenge and fun of the game is overcoming the challenges you're presented with and coming out on top anyway.

That said, the argument for is greater than against. In the real world a military force is going to prepare for the battlefield as best they possibly can. In MWO that would mean we should be able to anticipate the range profile we'll be engaging at.

[Vlad Ward]

Anjian, on 05 May 2021 - 07:28 AM, said:

There are games where you can pick mechs/tanks/planes/ships/vehicles, you don't need 60 seconds for it. When you see a map, you know by experience and instinct to pick which one in your hanger. Everyone can already drop within 5 to 10 seconds if they already know what to do and has preselected hangers for it.

Team synergy is more important than Map synergy. You do need time to talk to the other 11 folks dropping with you and figure out what everyone is doing.

Anjian, on 05 May 2021 - 07:28 AM, said:

One issue with this game is that one map favors one build. Instead, a map should have terrain features that make good use of brawlers, snipers, tanks, support, and runners all in one match. So not everyone has to drop with the same metabuild. Some can drop as runners, some can drop as brawlers, some can drop as snipers. The key point is that the map design should make every role and potential build relevant.

Honestly, this feels like an extremely limited perspective. Team synergy doesn't seem to matter right now in QP because it's impossible to take advantage of it without a group. The whole reason groups are so powerful is because groups are able to coordinate builds.

I feel like folks really need to recalibrate their POV a bit if Map Synergy is the only thing that comes to mind when we talk about Mech Select.

Anjian, on 05 May 2021 - 07:28 AM, said:

As the match progresses, there are also phases in the match, which you can illustrate as the start, where everyone is feeling each other out, the middle where it begins to get interesting, and the end where everyone is all out and desperate for the win. This can also result in different mech drops per phases if the game happens to have respawns and is objective based.

So there are two levels of selection:

Selection by the map and by your initial team make up.

Selection as the match progresses, picking the best mech for the current stiuation.

I'd love respawns and the ability to switch 'Mechs to adapt to evolving situations, personally. That's a different conversation, though.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 05 May 2021 - 09:28 AM.

[HammerMaster]

pbiggz, on 05 May 2021 - 07:27 AM, said:

meaningless. this isn't battletech, where you wait for repairs and configuration changes to be done. This is a shooter game that happens in real time. Put your tabletop nonsense away.

Hahaha NO.

[Nightbird]

I play FP because I can play a much much larger variety of mechs by knowing the map and mode before I drop. In QP, you're stuck with a few generalist mechs unless you want to be at the mercy of the map vote.

[pbiggz]

HammerMaster, on 05 May 2021 - 09:34 AM, said:

Hahaha NO.

Its not a joke. Tabletop means nothing in this game. It never has meant anything and it can't mean anything. If you think it does, you just don't understand what you're asking for.

Additionally, if you, a 40something year old, insist on conducting yourself like a child, then people will talk down to you like a child. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.