66 replies to this topic

[1453 R]

So the so-called “Soup Queue” is fat. It’s really fat. It is exceptionally, annoyingly fat. Games in which both sides have 6+ assault ‘Mechs are the norm more than the exception, and games with no light ‘mechs at all, or even no medium ‘Mechs, are distressingly common. Everybody’s discussed (or worse) the reasons behind this to death, and people all claim to hate it. People want a greater variety of ‘Mech tonnage on the battlefield, more incentive to play smaller ‘Mechs. Short a total overhaul of match reward though, which we all know we aren’t gonna get...there’s little we can do to try and incentivize the play of smaller machines. Usually.

I’m going to throw out a few wild-eyed ideas for the purposes of discussion, just to see what emerges. I know the most common refrain is “give us drop decks in Quickplay!”, but I think we can do better than giving everybody Infinite Call of Duty Derplord Run-And-Die Freespawns and turn this game into a true mindless grindfest. A pilot’s single life per game having value, and the tactics required to try and preserve it, is a very important part of MWO for me and many other players, so remember top Just Say No to freespawns. That said...wubbout some of these?

1.) Bid-Down Bonus
This one’s super simple. For every five tons your ‘Mech is below 100, you gain a 5% bonus to your match rewards for the game. Piloting a Timber Wolf? You get a 25% Bid-Down Bonus, in addition to whatever your other bonuses are. Piloting a Flea because you hate your teammates, yourself, MWO, and the world in general and feel like throwing? You get an 80% bid-down bonus on whatever you earn whilst throwing. The less tonnage you bring to the game, the higher this single flat modifier is to your earnings. The more you Bid Down™, the better your eventual reward.

Benefits: Easy. Simple. Everybody can understand it. Everybody can predict it. Can likely be coded into the game in an afternoon. Provides a concrete reason to play the smallest ‘Mech you can go on tears with, and will steer people away from Turbo Fatness unless they’re willing to leave money on the table by being fat or very confident they won’t need the bonus to get their rewards.
Drawbacks: Piranha’s very carefully calculated their payouts to be pinchy and annoying, to encourage MC purchases to ease the pain. Adding a potentially enormous flat bonus to match payouts throws all their reward curve calculations out the window. If they did a Bid-Down Bonus it would likely include a tone-down of existing rewards, such that assault ‘Mechs end up effectively nerfed in their rewards. We all know where that would lead. Plus, many players are already drowning in Scrooge McDuck-level C-bills and would give zero schnitzels about reward adjustments whilst piloting their Infinite Fatnesses.

2.) Total Drop Tonnage Limit
Impose an upper limit on the amount of tonnage a side can have in a Quickplay drop. No idiotic 3x3x3x3 nonsense, just a single flat number the matchmaker’s not allowed to exceed. I repeat: not allowed to exceed. No release valves for the tonnage limit. Until the system can assemble a game within that limit on both sides, nobody gets to play. People who insist on driving Gojira and nothing but Gojira every single game can still do so, but their queue times will be higher and they will have a lot less fatness around them to absorb enemy fire. The actual tonnage number itself is almost irrelevant, and something Piranha would have to tweak. Supposedly the average tonnage of a MWO drop is 65 tons, so 800 tons would give everybody 65 tons to work with and 20 ‘floating’ tons. Bring something bigger than 65 tons and you’re guaranteeing the rest of your game will be lighter for it.

Benefits: Least intrusive method. Everybody can still play what they want to play, this is simply a fixed variable than has to be accounted for prior to matchmaking. After the match is make’d, it ceases to matter and everybody does what they’ve always done.
Drawbacks: Literally anything that makes the matchmaker more stringent and takes more time will provoke infinite fiery nerdrage. This method would also generally be considered ‘punitive’ by assault driver mains, who hate the thought of being told their natural preference for extreme fatness is bad. It’s not – it’s just that we can’t let everybody have “a natural preference for extreme fatness”.

3.) Detection Profiles
Given technical limitations this one’s just as unlikely as drop decks, sadly, but I think it’s one of the better ones. Put simply: fatter ‘Mechs are easier to spot. The more your ‘Mech weighs, the further away enemies can detect it. A hundred-ton mountain of Turbo Fatness can be detected and R-key’d over a thousand meters away, whilst that Flea somebody’s busy throwing with might only appear on sensors at 600 meters. Or less! Get wild! Sensor range boosters boost range as they do, but other percentage-based increases or reductions to sensor range work as a function of tonnage. Pilot the fattest ‘Mechs you can at every conceivable turn, and everybody will know where you are before you find a single enemy target.

Benefits: Has sad, feeble echoes of “Information Warfare”, in that lighter units are better at both detecting and not being detected. Lots of potential levers to pull for quirks and IW-esque stuff.
Drawbacks: Very possibly a total nothingburger – assault ‘Mechs never bother locating or acquiring their own targets anyways. If both teams are still nothing but fatness stacked on fatness, this turns into a wash. Also technically demanding for Piranha to implement, which means essentially impossible to do.

Anyone else have any other potential ideas? Anything worth discussing, refinements to existing ideas? We have a Cauldron, folks – it’s not impossible to push through player-generated ideas if we can polish them up enough.

[Monkey Lover]

3-3-3-3 is the right way it worked before and can again.

Issues with tonnage sizes range a lot depending on the tier in my view. I find a lot more lights and mediums with a balance mix match in the upper tiers. What you see is not what everyone is seeing.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 06 September 2021 - 11:23 AM.

[Dogstar]

1453 R, on 06 September 2021 - 10:58 AM, said:

1.) Bid-Down Bonus


3.) Detection Profiles

I've suggested something similar to the first item before, and it can be implemented without an engineer:

Give light and medium mechs an income bonus quirk

To really encourage players it needs to be substantial, such as a 50% bonus for lights, and a 30% bonus for mediums. This would stack for hero mechs so that they would have an 80% bonus for lights, and a 60% bonus for Mediums.

For item three I think it's possible to apply sensor range quirks to mechs too, the Cyclops has such a quirk so it should be possible. A small reduction in Assault sensor ranges and an increase in light and medium ranges would be taking a step towards this. There are certain 'scout' and 'sniper' mechs that could receive sensor range bonuses too. e.g. the Rifleman (not a great example as it's a heavy but well known for having that radar panel)

Edited by Dogstar, 06 September 2021 - 11:23 AM.

[1453 R]

Okay.

Explain how 3-3-3-3, which was proven to suck, not work at all, and just piss people off, would be somehow the fix to our problem this time?

[Monkey Lover]

1453 R, on 06 September 2021 - 11:22 AM, said:

Okay.

Explain how 3-3-3-3, which was proven to suck, not work at all, and just piss people off, would be somehow the fix to our problem this time?

Worked fine games were more balance they just couldn't program it. Ya it pissed people off because the group of 3 wanted to take 3 assaults or 3 lights screwing up balance.


Over all it doesn't matter they don't have programmers nothing is going to change.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 06 September 2021 - 11:26 AM.

[Commoners]

The biggest problem is the time it takes to find a match to meet those criteria. One of the quickest ways to kill MWO is to increase the time to find a match.

[1453 R]

Commoners, on 06 September 2021 - 11:32 AM, said:

The biggest problem is the time it takes to find a match to meet those criteria. One of the quickest ways to kill MWO is to increase the time to find a match.

I know. Personally, I favor increasing match reward for lighter chassis more than restricting drop tonnage. I'm just also real blurdy sick of every single drop being at least 40% Gojira. There's got to be a way to get people out of the Fatness and into the smaller, nimbler machines games need more of. MechWarrior and BattleTech in general has always been at its best in the medium-ish weight bracket, where fights are as much about move and countermove as they are about hundred-point Alfalpha nonsense, ne?

[FupDup]

One of the issues with tonnage limits is that cavalry mechs like the Gargoyle are over-valued. Class limits have the same issue of course but from the other end (there's no way in hell a Gargles is an equal match for an Annihilator). Some kind of BattleValue system might be able to avoid that but BV has plenty of other issues of its own.

Tonnage limits would also be used to retroactively justify lighter mechs being weaker, causing people to get even more upset when they get touched inappropriately by something below their weight and further feeding the arm's race to the top.

I do like the detectability profiles thing and have believed in it for a long time, but I really doubt it would be enough to make a difference here. It probably also requires new mechanics, which instantly takes it off the table.

Bid-down avoids balance issues because it doesn't directly impact what you can take, but that also makes it less effective at achieving the desired outcome. The thing is that the monopoly money payouts aren't the only unrewarding part of using a smaller mech. The actual gameplay feel itself (during combat) is less rewarding. Retaining the unrewarding gameplay while increasing monopoly money rewards basically makes the mechs feel like you're choosing between a "fun" mech and a farmer mech rather than farming with whatever you find most fun.

So basically, when people take one of the non-fatbros they need to feel like they're making as much of a difference in the outcome of the match as a fatbro, which is admittedly easier said than done. We can buff the underpowered mechs but that can only go so far (we had this discussion in the Cougar thread so no need to rehash all of it).

I think another aspect of this is the lore of BT (and thus the fans of it) tends to glorify the biggest mechs (and the pilots of them) and treat the smaller mechs as inferior fodder (lights are seen as "trainer" mechs). The Dire Wolf in particular has an absurd number of canon custom hero configs made for it. The older playerbase might also have something to do with using slower mechs that don't require as quick of reaction times. Even under perfectly equal mech balancing, I think there might be at least some bias towards the bigger robots. People dig giant robots, as it turns out.

We're kind of in a pickle.

Edited by FupDup, 06 September 2021 - 12:12 PM.

[Capt Deadpool]

Recent weapon buffs and new PPFLD velocities have made the battlefield more dangerous for lighter tonnage mechs of all stripes. New Polar, Canyon, and Manifold have also dramatically reduced nascaaring--at least at higher tier levels--as people are finally starting to understand the how to hold and defend advantageous positions, and this behavior is actually spreading to other maps.

Overall, weapon buffs and new player behavior patterns/tactics effectively have buffed the heavier classes (holding defensive positions both allows them to utilize their new shiny toys better while also preventing slower mechs from being in a position where they can be attacked by what should be able to counter them--smaller, faster mechs), while both changes are nerfs to lower tonnage mechs.

Note I am not saying less nascaar is bad for the game by any means, only that the above reasons are why the meta has shifted even more to benefit heavier classes in recent months.

[MadHornet]

I was thinking rewards based on percentages of mechs being played. Lights tend to be disproportionately low so giving C-Bill/XP bonuses for playing them when their match% is low would be nice. Say a weight class dips below 15%, a fixed bonus will be in effect if you launch during that instance, like 25% more C-Bills and XP.

[justcallme A S H]

#1 - So a good light player suddenly gets a huge buff over Heavy players? No dice.

#2 - Completely screws wait times and would be a complete disaster to try and code for and forces you to do things you might not. How do you skill up a new 100T mech?. No dice.

#3 - Not sure where to start on that one.

[John Bronco]

1453 R, on 06 September 2021 - 10:58 AM, said:

Everybody’s discussed (or worse) the reasons behind this to death, and people all claim to hate it.

I don't think this is a universal opinion, based on the discussions on these forums. The prevailing thought seems to be that all classes should have similar viability in terms of performance potential, thus lights and maybe some meds will continue to need adjustment. But if the balance folks ultimately think things are about where they're supposed to be, and people still favor heavy mechs - so what?

I want people to have the freedom to play what they want to play and not be inconvenienced by it.

[KaptinOrk]

I've always felt that as long as rewards are biased toward damage, kills and KMDD, 'mechs should have variable rewards based on their tonnage, rewards that scale inversely to their tonnage. A Locust pulling 600 damage in a game takes some real effort and piloting skill, while a Dire Wolf pulling 600 damage is a middling performance.

I like the "Bid down" system you suggested, higher challenge should bring greater rewards.

[1453 R]

Nobody has to be stuck on my ideas. If folks have better ones, by all means share them.

I absolutely agree, Fup. Until people feel like smaller 'mechs can contribute just as much as larger ones, we're stuck in a situation where we have to either bribe people to play smaller stuff or punish them for playing larger stuff. The real place to fix that is in game mode and objective design, but...well. We all know better, even if Conquest is just a revamped reward structure away from being pretty much the only game mode MWO needs.

But mobility simply isn't important in Skirmish. Every top-tier player cuts their engine down to the absolute bare minimum they can for Quickplay builds, because being able to cover ground is meaningless in a game mode where the ground doesn't matter for spit. It's actively detrimental in Domination, and Assault and Incursion are both just Skirmish with extra steps, as everyone has constantly said. We can't fix the game modes to incentivize mobility in meaningful ways, so we're left with bribing people to pilot smaller stuff or punishing the overuse of larger stuff.

How do we do that in a way that makes the game better, instead of dumber?

[Escef]

1453 R, on 06 September 2021 - 10:58 AM, said:

1.) Bid-Down Bonus
This one’s super simple. For every five tons your ‘Mech is below 100, you gain a 5% bonus to your match rewards for the game. Piloting a Timber Wolf? You get a 25% Bid-Down Bonus, in addition to whatever your other bonuses are. Piloting a Flea because you hate your teammates, yourself, MWO, and the world in general and feel like throwing? You get an 80% bid-down bonus on whatever you earn whilst throwing. The less tonnage you bring to the game, the higher this single flat modifier is to your earnings. The more you Bid Down™, the better your eventual reward.

I've suggested something like this for a while. My idea is that you get a percentage bonus/penalty to your match rewards equal to 25 minus what ever percentage of the queue is made up of your mech's weight class. Dropping as a medium while mediums are at 20%? Cool, 5% bonus. Dropping as a light while lights are at 10%? Good for you, you get a cookie in the form of a 15% bonus.Dropping as a heavy while heavies are at 40%? That's a 15% penalty; nothing personal, but you're basically Ikea giving the matchmaker an extra left side for the bookcase when the problem is it's short 3 screws.

1453 R, on 06 September 2021 - 10:58 AM, said:

2.) Total Drop Tonnage Limit

Frankly, I think all this will accomplish is increase wait times, which will make no one happy. Something like Option 1 is more likely to work because it is a personal reward/punishment system that doesn't actually prevent people from playing what they want, nor does it cause games to fire off more slowly than normal.

1453 R, on 06 September 2021 - 10:58 AM, said:

3.) Detection Profiles
Given technical limitations this one’s just as unlikely as drop decks, sadly, but I think it’s one of the better ones. Put simply: fatter ‘Mechs are easier to spot. The more your ‘Mech weighs, the further away enemies can detect it. A hundred-ton mountain of Turbo Fatness can be detected and R-key’d over a thousand meters away, whilst that Flea somebody’s busy throwing with might only appear on sensors at 600 meters. Or less! Get wild! Sensor range boosters boost range as they do, but other percentage-based increases or reductions to sensor range work as a function of tonnage. Pilot the fattest ‘Mechs you can at every conceivable turn, and everybody will know where you are before you find a single enemy target.

Benefits: Has sad, feeble echoes of “Information Warfare”, in that lighter units are better at both detecting and not being detected. Lots of potential levers to pull for quirks and IW-esque stuff.
Drawbacks: Very possibly a total nothingburger – assault ‘Mechs never bother locating or acquiring their own targets anyways. If both teams are still nothing but fatness stacked on fatness, this turns into a wash. Also technically demanding for Piranha to implement, which means essentially impossible to do.

This does have the potential to be a NothingBurger, but it is also an interesting idea that is likely easier to implement than you think it is. There are already sensor range quirks, so that part isn't an issue. The issue is making the bigger mechs more detectable. What I think would be extra nice would be for the engines to carry a modifier based on rating that affects how far away a mech can be targeted. Possibly even higher modifiers (effectively penalties) for XLs and LFEs. For example, an Atlas with a 325 or 350 standard engine would not be targetable as far out as, say, an absolute maniac like me running a Battlemaster with a 400XL.

[Kanil]

1453 R, on 06 September 2021 - 03:45 PM, said:

Until people feel like smaller 'mechs can contribute just as much as larger ones, we're stuck in a situation where we have to either bribe people to play smaller stuff or punish them for playing larger stuff. The real place to fix that is in game mode and objective design, but...well. We all know better, even if Conquest is just a revamped reward structure away from being pretty much the only game mode MWO needs.

I mean, the only game mode right now that isn't Skirmish With Extra Steps is FP Conquest*, specifically because the dropdeck makes it physically impossible to win by just killing the other team. That isn't true in QP Conquest, where most matches end with one team killing the other then capping. Since you're opposed to dropdecks, I'm curious what you think would stop the vast majority of Conquest games from being kill other team -> cap now that they're dead.

If killing the other team remains the primary way to win, then people will naturally gravitate towards the 'mechs that are the best at that, which are the big ones. A mass of assault 'mechs is the reasonable outcome of the game as currently designed. (Side note: Punishing people for trying to win is a terrible idea.)

* Technically Scouting exists too, but smokediving is not the way forward.

[1453 R]

I'm opposed to drop decks because one of the key things that makes this game feel like a BattleTech game - even with all its jank, its weirdness, its Solaris showboating builds, its bizarre screw-ups and warts - is that your 'Mech is valuable. Lose it and you're done. Hell, let it get damaged frivolously and you can be done. Slamming junk-first into an enemy firing line is the move of an absolute boneheaded nitwit who didn't deserve the 'Mech they were riding in the first place.

Drop decks completely, utterly, irrevocably, and invincibly destroy that. When the best move becomes "Oh shoot, I just lost an arm with a few lasers in it. Oh well, this ride's done, time to push Eject and get into the next one", your game has stopped being a BattleTech game and become Titanfall. Titanfall is fun, but I have no interest in playing it. Especially when I click "Mechwarrior Online". Drop decks happen? then slamming junk-first into an enemy firing line becomes just the normal way to play the game, and that would be the death knell for MWO.

As for Conquest stopping 'kill the other team', it's been my experience that teams that utterly ignore the cap - the whole "kill everybody then cap when they're dead" bit - tend to lose more than win. Unless they win the shooting match very quickly and with absolute finality, a team that allows its enemy to sit on a 4/1 split or even a 5/0 counter for just a couple of minutes ends up hopelessly behind. All the last couple of living guys have to do is stay alive, perhaps tilt some red caps back to blue, and they win. And if both teams are jockeying to keep a 3/2 split, trying to avoid giving up the cap but not pressing it hard? Well, that's still a game where mobility is valuable. You still have to be in more than one place on the map, and a team that ignores enemy lighter assets in Conquest is a team that loses Conquest.

Earlier today, I was in a Conquest game on Mining Collective where both teams were just slugging it out in the middle. I saw a JagerMech trundling towards Sigma, and took my Black Lanner self that way to deny him the cap. Turned out? it was the JagerMech and a K2 Fratapult. Ultras on the Jager, heavy peeps on the K2. I decided to engage, and took on both of those 'Mechs by myself despite being outweighed by a factor of 2.5. Not only did I kill the Catapult (by staying inside its effective range and ensuring that either terrain or the Catapult was between me and the JagerMech for ninety percent of the fight. Lanner be nimble, Lanner be quick, Lanner says "don't shoot me, ****"), I managed to outmaneuver the JagerMech long enough for it to get frustrated and run off...and while my 55 tons was holding up 130 tons at Sigma, my team got the firefight under control 6 to 3 and took firm control of the map. Flipped Sig back to blue and went to rejoin the fight, if rather dinged up from going Lanno y F#$%o with two heavy 'Mechs.

That is the kind of moment I want more of in MechWarrior online. Moments where smaller, faster 'Mechs can use that mobility to forcibly seize the initiative from enemies and present them with dilemmas. That JagerMech could've stayed put and tried to keep contesting Sigma, and I was perfectly prepared to keep screwing with him until either he died, I did, or I got Sigma under control. He chose to abandon the point and get back to the main fight, and that meant ceding the points to me after mistaking my rinky-dink medium for an easy kill. I couldn't have done that in a larger 'Mech, and it wouldn't have happened if there were no game modes where mobility was key and murderballing means you lose.

[Elizander]

The times when I play though the assaults aren't that prevalent. I've had games where there were 0-2 assaults per team. I do understand that it does get a little frustrating for players who pick smaller mechs if there are 5+ assaults per game though.

I guess that system would be something like what they have in MMORPG dungeon queues. Like when there are not enough tanks or healers, the provide an incentive for people to queue up as a tank or a healer to get the dungeon groups rolling.

We shouldn't go into the 'penalize players' territory though and just focus on positive reinforcement. I think we've all had enough of pointless nerfs over the years. There's also a big difference with making someone play an unskilled light versus getting light pilots that are actually good to drop in quick play.

Lights are still shafted for capping in Conquest because the game thinks that's not worth the effort in terms of rewards and same goes for Assault.

Again, don't penalize anyone. Let people play what they want. Give players a C-bill/XP bonus for capping and make flip caps in Conquest kick the counter-capper's points up by a decent amount like+10 to +25 to make it feel like it matters even in a losing game. Don't screw over the capper in the team score section. Sure, killing the enemy team is important, but do you know just how much time you need to waste to run from cap point to cap point? That's a lot of out-of-combat down time even on a fast mech and it's due to how the game itself is designed.

I'm not going to sit here and figure out an entire system for it though because I don't think it's that big of a problem. I'd still prefer other issues to be addressed first and you're never going to be able to 100% control player behavior without being too draconian and making people quit having fun. The best solution is game design, the next option is incentives (which might forced people to do stuff they don't want which is bad) and the third is be a dictator and force them to do it, but this never ends well.

[Storming Angel]

Id rather just have conquest give out actual rewards when you cap so 2k c-bills for capping. 50k for first, 25k for second 10k for third.

Then give lights a 15% bonus to c-bills and mediums a 10% bonus.

Since they dont have any programmers whatsoever, this is what we are stuck with really.

[Bud Crue]

Speaking only to my narrow class of "fast", 60-65 tonners that I favor over all other mechs, the only thing that encourages/makes me play anything lighter are tonnage restrictions when in a group, or event requirements (which sometimes I will ignore of the rewards aren't worth it). Beyond that, if they made the 60-65 tonners move like crap, and/or made them disproportionately large via a rescale that might do it, but it would have to be a pretty dramatic agility nerf and/or size increase to force me in that direction. Even in that scenario, I'd probably just drop down 10 tons and move to various 50-55 tonners, or worse, from the perspective of the point of your OP, move up to the more agile 70-75 tonners (Timby is no slouch anymore).