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TheCaptainJZ, on 11 September 2023 - 11:25 AM, said:
I mean this in a very broad and generalized way. I don't know what a proper number is. Of course, a blanket number change would be bad because it would have significant effects not easily predicted. But I'd argue that reducing damage overall is equivalent, if done right, to increasing armor. Yes, high alphas do come directly from more and more mechs having more and more hardpoints. But there are contributing causes as well. You can't tell me that redesigning the skill tree didn't contribute a little bit, now that there's almost no give and take between maxing out all the heat decreasing skills and cooldown and buffing armor because you don't have to overstep less desirable skills. Likewise, you can't tell me quirks don't further exasperate the problem when combined with everything else. If we buff armor, which would also be ok to me, then you're going to find a lot of players whining that their mechs and weapons feel weaker and unfun. I'm not saying we do a blanket numbers cut--it has to be well-thought out and I would expect that to take a lot of time and energy and iterations. I'm also not saying we eliminate quirks. They absolutely are needed in some cases, and they can add flavor to variants. But everything together has really decreased ttk and personally, I don't like it. You used to be able to move around the map more, at range, without losing a component from one enemy in one volley. That's much harder or rarer today. I know no one will act on my suggestions because the player base abhors nerfs of any kind but are ok with buffs that actually achieve the same effect. I mean, this game has been power creeping from day 1.
The person I was responding to didn't want a buff to armour; they were asking for a full rollback to pre-cauldron values because they prefer that meta, dislike the current one, and think that anyone who likes the current one is bad and playing illegitimately. The rest of their post was post-hoc rationalization for why its ok for him to demand a certain meta and not ok for anyone else. He's expressing the same tired old exclusiveness and possessiveness that has plagued certain parts of this community for years; acting like the game is his to enjoy and yours to leave.
With that out of the way, I dont think we need to buff armour or debuff weapons. What we need to do is shift the balance away from stacking only weapons on your mech, to stacking equipment.
If you've ever played Mechwarrior 5 with mods, you will know you can do things like really cool melee mechs; using black carapace to self heal, plus triple-strength myomer for the sprint and attack buff. You can stack larger, more powerful actuators on your mech to replace the standard ones, taking up slots but buffing certain equipment. You can add specialized melee reinforcements. Then you put the big axe on and *slap* things.
This game wont ever have melee, but there's no reason for us not to have an assortment of exciting gameplay-altering equipment, which we can use to tailor a mech to our liking while also taking up tonnage that would otherwise have gone exclusively to more guns. Think about an electronic warfare raven with stealth armour, null sig, ECM, BAP, maybe C3. That raven might pack a single large laser, but the equipment it brings would dramatically change a game. In mwo you don't really have those choices. Guns and armour are your only options, and we've obviously come to a junction point where that's no longer good enough for people.
Edited by pbiggz, 11 September 2023 - 02:13 PM.
