Der Geisterbaer, on 12 May 2022 - 09:48 AM, said:
The general problem now being that you're now sort of pleading that MWO is a special case where the player base is "too stupid" to flock to the "obviously overpowered" mechs whereas in every other game such "clearly overpowered units / classes" would have drawn in lots of the involved players. So what makes MWO's player base so "special" - not to say "dumb"?
Magrowl is correct. There's several issues going on with MWO that are not like other games. It is a special case.
MWO has much more complicated dynamics when it comes to skill floors and ceilings than many other games because there are more gameplay dynamics and variables. The skill gap between low and high skill players is much larger than many games. This isn't always apparent because, due to the nature of the game, big skill differences don't always translate into that large of a W:L or score difference. But that's a different issue. (Ex. in a high speed high lethality shooter like Counterstrike Source, a player twice as good as average might scoop up a 10:1 K:D ratio. This is possible because they can 1v1 10 people in a row, one shot each, and take no dmg back. In MWO this cannot be done due to lower lethality and no healing.)
In most shooter games, you're worrying about shooting well and dodging well. Positioning matters, but you're fast enough to recover from a bad mistake. And you can respawn and try again. In MWO, you need to be accurate, often with multiple desynced weapon systems. And you need to evade and manage what parts of your mech you expose. You need to twist, spread, and shield. And you need to be far more aware of positioning both of yourself, your team, and the enemy team. If you make a strategic level error, its basically impossible to recover by outshooting or out dodging your opponents.
Not only is there a big skill gap, but there's a huge knowledge component that many games don't have. The difference between an optimized and non-optimized version of the same sort of loadout on the same mech variant can be huge in practice. Even something as simple as having the correct weapons in your high mounts vs low arms can easily translate into 100s of dmg done. And then there's all the knowledge of other mechs and their loadouts. There's a huge difference between a player who knows what part of a given enemy mech with a given loadout is most optimal to focus and one who doesn't, even if all else is equal. And then there's map knowledge, strat knowledge, etc. And the thing with this knowledge based stuff is that people can play the game for years and still never pick this stuff up if they don't seek out more information.
So yes, MWO has a ton more variables, and tons of breakpoints for being becoming viable or not viable. There are mechs/loadouts that are effective in the hands of low tier players vs other low tier players, but not in the hands of high tier vs other high tier (LRMs). Low tier assault players can reliably fight off low tier light players, but not high tier. High tier assault players can easily obliterate low tier light players, but can be unable to stop high tier harassers from shutting them down.
If you look at all the variables for both skill and knowledge and everything else that goes into the game, you can get an idea of the maximum potential that can be achieved by a player with high skill and knowledge vs low. The size of this gap and where the average member of the playerbase is varies by game. And for MWO it is large.
The majority of the playerbase is below the midpoint when it comes to player potential. Which is a fancy way of saying that, yes, most of the player base is just bad at the game/dumb. Of the things they could be doing to succeed, they are leaving a lot on the table, and are often totally oblivious to them. And that can be true even if they are very experienced, and even if they have good aim and reactions. Twitch abilities won't save your performance if you run unoptimized bracket builds and position wrong.
So, with all that in mind, yes it is entirely possible that the playerbase overall is "too stupid" to flock to the "obviously overpowered" mechs. Because those mechs may not be overpowered without high enough skill and knowledge. But once you pass a certain point, they can suddenly become very powerful. Its not necessarily a linear increase in performance as skill increases.
For an example of this effect (with fake numbers), you could have a low skill light pilot who can avoid getting shot 80% of the time. This isn't a big deal, because they only need to get shot once or twice to be out of commission. And a mid skill light pilot can avoid getting shot 90% of the time. And a high skill light pilot who can avoid getting shot 100% of the time. The high skill pilot improved by the same amount over the mid as the mid did over the low, but it makes a big difference!
For a more realistic example, consider a sniper who can 3 shot kill most mechs (like a MAD-4L or Kaiju with 50 PPFLD). That's pretty damn powerful, right? Well, it depends. It has the potential to take out mechs in 3 shots, but only if it lands all 3 on the CT. A low skill player may put two shots into each torso component before they land a 3rd on any of them. So that's 7 hits to take out something, and up to 9 to kill. And that's at whatever hit %. A high skill player with better aim may spread over only 2 components. Which would mean 5 to destroy something, and 5 or 6 to kill (and probably a higher hit rate). That's already a huge difference in number of volleys needed, and may be enough to kill before heat cap. (And of course someone with the accuracy to land all 3 shots cleanly on the CT reliably every time would massacre everything in such a mech. But that doesn't really happen because of projectile travel time and twisting.)
The sniper's performance varies a lot based on accuracy as compared to, say, lockon missiles. The sniper could well be overpowered in the hands of high skilled players while not being overpowered in the hands of low skilled players because even a relatively small difference in accuracy can make a huge difference in kill effectiveness. Or you could have situations where sniping is overpowered when done from certain places on a map, but worthless otherwise. In which case its a knowledge issue.
So yeah that was long winded, but yes things can be overpowered in relative terms within a tier. And things can be overpowered but only in the hands of people that cross a certain breakpoint of skill/knowledge (Gauss+ERLL DWF.)
(Note that I'm not making a specific comment on Viper, PIR, etc here.)
Edited by Heavy Money, 12 May 2022 - 01:33 PM.
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