101 replies to this topic

[Sjorpha]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 26 May 2022 - 06:06 AM, said:

My favorite example is LRMs, which in the right situation, can being pretty brutal. Things like NARC last too long with no real counterplay other than try to find cover or find ECM. Those are niche situations though as yeah, there are plenty of hard counters to LRMs. But if something is incredibly powerful even in niche situations, that is still imbalanced. And the fact they are almost worthless in all the other situations is again, part of an imbalance. It isn't just about what FotM is running around and what is awful.

That's a fair point, you don't want a niche move in a game being too overwhelmingly strong in it's niche.

But you do want it to be very strong though, that is the point of having niche moves in games. So for example, streaks do need to be very strong against lights if that's going to be their niche application, LRMs do need to be strong with narc backup if that's going to be their niche and so forth.

So if a mech is primarily good in isolated close range 1v1s, which I think is the suggested niche for light brawlers, then it does need to be pretty strong in that situation.

Now there's two questions here: Are light brawlers a narrow niche? And are they too strong in that niche?
In my estimation the answer is actually no to both of these questions.
1. I don't think the niche of light brawlers is all that narrow, they can contribute well in a number of situations and if nothing else they can always spot and tactically expose and fade to be annoying. Basically they are lights and lights are flexible mechs even when built for close range.
2. I don't think there is good evidence that they are too strong in brawls either, if they were we would see lots of complaints about light brawlers beating heavier brawlers to easily. But instead the complaints tend to be about them rather easily killing mid to long range mechs that are out of position, which in my view is exactly what they should be doing.

At the end of the day, niche or not the ultimate metric for a mech being balanced is still match impact as reflected by winrate.

You CAN use anecdotal evidence as well if it's from a controlled environment that precludes cherry picking. So for example if a mech seems to dominate and overperform in tournaments that's a reason to look at it, but a bunch of cherry picked QP matches where it does is not because it's trivial to produce some impressive matches with pretty much any mech.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 26 May 2022 - 06:06 AM, said:

While I may have brought up a single solution, pretty sure I've laid out several things just within this thread (or maybe I'm thinking of the other thread, highly possible I'm confusing the two threads).

And I would make the claim that you laid out those things as a result of me questioning the "single solution". And yes, it would appear that you're mixing up some points between different threads and there certainly are things on your list that would raise opposition if discussed more in detail as part of "a solution" to whichever focus point of problem (hardpoint inflation vs. crit damage weapons) we'd chose.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 26 May 2022 - 06:06 AM, said:

Expecting a consensus is an exercise in futility.

Well, a reasonable amount of statistical proof, number crunching and a certain level of consensus on certain "problems" is exactly ...

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 26 May 2022 - 06:06 AM, said:

[..] because let's be honest, the devs don't pay attention to this and I doubt the Calderon or whatever it is cares about these forums either given higher tier players general disdain for these forums (aka the brown sea).

... what seems to exist within "the Cauldron" whether or not they pay (some level of) attention to the "brown sea". I for one am somewhat glad things are as they appearently are because I have zero interest in seeing certain players getting their wishes come true "just because" it may sound plausible to them and others who just "feel" the same.

As for the devs not paying attention? Well, at least on occasion someone from the dev team seems to read the forums: otherwise I wouldn't have gotten "Likes" from Mark twice now (albeit on entirely different topics) but then again: Why would they pay particular attention to the forums (or even the Cauldron) on topics if there's not at least a modicum of consensus on what might have to change even if "the numbers" don't show a clear picture?!