265 replies to this topic

[MechMaster059]

foamyesque, on 16 June 2024 - 10:00 PM, said:

You are aware that this has been a thing with XL engines ever since their introduction and that in TT you could actually crit them out without even needing to blow off the STs?

I figured destroying an IS XL side torso also destroying the mech has been a thing since the beginning. I didn't know you could also crit them out but it makes sense that would be possible as well.

I disagree with the TT rules on this for MWO. I think it's bad for MWO because it contributes to excessively short TTK and thus snowballing. Snowballing is bad because it makes the rest of the match feel like a hopeless waste of time for the remaining players on the losing team.

The changes I proposed would still be a severe penalty for losing a ST with an XL engine. Besides whatever weapons/heat sinks were lost from the ST and arm, the mech would have an additional -2 internal heat sinks, -20% heat capacity, and -30% move speed.

=====

Quicksilver Aberration, on 16 June 2024 - 10:25 PM, said:

Typically yes. Who else do you think typically drives the meta? Gaussapults, Splatcats, Splaturions, Poptarts, Whales, Timbies, etc etc

Generally playing comp means experimenting and figuring out what works and what doesn't. As you figure out what works, other people start to figure it out as well and slowly but surely things trickle down.

The only meta that matters for the vast majority of the player base is the meta in QP. That's the only place I play. I suspect that's where a majority of the player base spends most of its time playing as well. Am I wrong on that?

The source of the meta in high tier QP, whether it's due to trickle-down from comp or invented by the players base or a combination of both is irrelevant to this discussion. What's relevant is WHAT IS THE META in QP and can it be IMPROVED UPON because that's where the player base spends most of its time. QP is where the streamers I referenced play, therefore their streams are relevant to this question.

Do you understand that QP is what matters most to the player base, not what the game experience in a competitive match is?

Quicksilver Aberration, on 16 June 2024 - 10:25 PM, said:

Elite and good is a pretty meaningless distinction, one is typically meant to be be better than the other but what separates elite from good? What's the bar?

I'm not going into the weeds with you on some abstract discussion about Elite vs Good. All that matters is the streamers I referenced are good enough to show what the meta is like in high tier QP.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 16 June 2024 - 10:25 PM, said:

...QP is always going to be a mess of just everything, it was true in MW4 and is true here.

Given your condescending attitude towards QP, why do you bother commenting in all these threads? You seem to spew forth a lot of verbiage about something you don't seem to care much about.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 16 June 2024 - 10:25 PM, said:

Again, using QP as an example is fairly awful example, ...

QP is where people play the game.

Quicksilver Aberration, on 16 June 2024 - 10:25 PM, said:

I just don't care if Sean or TTB are popping ST in QP, it's a meaningless accomplishment and not telling of anything other than the population in QP is....rough.

If you don't care about the meta in QP why do you keep commenting in this thread? Clearly this discussion is beneath you so why waste your time?

Quicksilver Aberration, on 16 June 2024 - 10:25 PM, said:

Now the part I will agree is that some weapons (HAGs post-spread/pre-splash and heavy lasers) offer too much damage volume that allows for obliterating lesser players but their usefulness diminishes quickly against better players. Those are symptoms of design issues with the weapon and are the reason why feedback of lower tiers is still worthwhile.

Lights, LRMs, etc all fall within this category. However some are easier to fix than others.

Do you have any concrete proposals for what can be done or do you only ever want to speak in abstract terms without ever committing to any solutions?

Edited by MechMaster059, 16 June 2024 - 10:53 PM.

[Void Angel]

Oh for... I hate the auto-logout feature of these forums. Just lost a whole post, and I'm not even going to bother recreating it - I'll just give the highlight reel.

Tabletop is not a reference for game balance in this game. It is a rulebook for an entirely different game set in the same universe. Because it is set in the same universe, the tonnage mechanic is preserved, as are most of the 'mech construction rules, but the game doesn't have to "explain" deviations from tabletop because tabletop is not a rulebook for this game. Pointing out that the people you are arguing with have better bona fides than you do is perfectly valid when you are citing your own experience. Objecting to your insistence you must be correct, because your subjective opinions match what you think you see on Youtube, via pointing out better qualifications in those questioning you is a perfectly valid response. Also, your win-loss last month was 0.93' mine was 1.64 - and I've been playing a lot longer than the Jarl's List has been keeping score.

Just reasserting your debunked opinions over and over doesn't make you right - that's a fallacy called "argument by assertion." You support this strategy by continually trying to shift the burden of proof, set up distracting arguments, move the goalposts, and attack your opponents - all to avoid actually justifying yourself. Whether you intend this or are simply bad at argument is immaterial; it's still what you're doing - knock it off.

Your entire diatribe reads like a checklist of informal fallacies and bad faith argument: straw men, red herrings, raising the bar, proof by assertion, tone policing, ... I should make bingo cards.

Edited by Void Angel, 17 June 2024 - 12:08 AM.

[feeWAIVER]

They have said repeatedly that the game is balanced around Quickplay, as that is where the majority paying customers play.
Don't let the trash heap talk offend you, feel bad for him.. guy lives in Kansas City, Misery, one of the poorest states in the union.
Talk about top of the trash heap, MWO is likely all he has going on in his life.

Poor guy, literally.

Edited by feeWAIVER, 17 June 2024 - 05:29 AM.

[Ignatius Audene]

feeWAIVER, on 17 June 2024 - 05:27 AM, said:

They have said repeatedly that the game is balanced around Quickplay, as that is where the majority paying customers play.
Don't let the trash heap talk offend you, feel bad for him.. guy lives in Kansas City, Misery, one of the poorest states in the union.
Talk about top of the trash heap, MWO is likely all he has going on in his life.

Poor guy, literally.

Shots fired. Mwo is a rly low AVG skill level community. According to jarls I am in the top 200. In most shooters I qualify as "ok".

Probably because a big part of the player base comes from single player games and or table top. Now I go and grab some minis to paint

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MechMaster059, on 16 June 2024 - 10:27 PM, said:

The only meta that matters for the vast majority of the player base is the meta in QP. That's the only place I play. I suspect that's where a majority of the player base spends most of its time playing as well. Am I wrong on that?

There is less of a defined meta for QP because of what I mentioned. How do you determine what is effective when massive skill level differences can significantly muddy the waters? In fact, the meta can be different amongst the tiers if LRMs have proved anything over the years. Like I said earlier, in QP skill level is more important than mech choice most of the time which should tell you the "meta" is much less defined in QP.

Hell, let me ask this, what do you think some meta designs are?

MechMaster059, on 16 June 2024 - 10:27 PM, said:

Do you have any concrete proposals for what can be done or do you only ever want to speak in abstract terms without ever committing to any solutions?

I do, a new game. Most of the problems like lock-ons, variant bloat, etc are foundational and have zero chance of getting fixed without a new game.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 17 June 2024 - 07:21 AM.

[Void Angel]

The game may be balanced primarily around quickplay data - because of course it is, and it should be. But we're talking about balancing theory and player skill levels, not quickplay telemetry. Mechmaster's argument was that tabletop rulebooks provide an unimpeachable proof that game balance is totally off; a claim that he backed up by citing the skill of Youtube streamers - shifting the conversation to include everyone from Tier 1 to the steering-wheel underhive is kind of self-defeating. When you're talking about what will work, cherry-picking data from higher-level players to support your viewpoint and then turning around and citing the people who insist on using joysticks (or steering wheels, which is where the meme comes from) is rather contradictory.

PS: Slamming a stranger on the internet for being poor, because they from a less prosperous region in one of the richest nations on earth, is the most asinine thing I have ever seen in a long time.

Edited by Void Angel, 17 June 2024 - 07:46 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Void Angel, on 17 June 2024 - 07:45 AM, said:

PS: Slamming a stranger on the internet for being poor, because they from a less prosperous region in one of the richest nations on earth, is the most asinine thing I have ever seen in a long time.

It's also odd because it makes a lot of assumptions, all I'll say is be careful of using just averages, averages hide other statistically important data.

[feeWAIVER]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 17 June 2024 - 08:02 AM, said:

It's also odd because it makes a lot of assumptions, all I'll say is be careful of using just averages, averages hide other statistically important data.

No no, I get it.
After a long day of mining lead, and making the 45 minute commute through a patchwork of corn fields, sometimes a fella just wants to clear the cockroaches off his desk, have some bbq, and take his life's frustrations on the trash heap in the quick play queue.

But you know that we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

QP is where the mass population plays, but for all the hullabaloo about balance that the playerbase complains about, the only portion of balance that actually matters is ones like I described earlier, ones that overperform against lower tier players but are underwhelming against upper tier players. QP can and should be enjoyable, and balance typically has little to do with that outside of crazy changes like LRMageddon, Snubpocalypse, the fun cHERPPC change, etc (ie instances where something was legitimately broken). Skill based matchmaking can sometimes make QP less tolerable but so can the fact that it is a soup queue which is partially why these have become a divisive subject across all PvP games. Map design also plays a significant factor in this as well, and a large number of the maps in this game are flat out awful, the good ones still have a number of changes that they need to be better (even my favorite, mining collective).

In other words, there's no silver bullet, it's a complex system and thus would likely require tuning of several dimensions to actually make it better. For example stomps can easily happen due to how easy things can snowball in this game which is actually part of why endgames are generally cleanup and not some tense "too close for comfort" sort of ending that I think a lot of people say they enjoy.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 17 June 2024 - 09:43 AM.

[foamyesque]

feeWAIVER, on 17 June 2024 - 09:15 AM, said:

No no, I get it.
After a long day of mining lead, and making the 45 minute commute through a patchwork of corn fields, sometimes a fella just wants to clear the cockroaches off his desk, have some bbq, and take his life's frustrations on the trash heap in the quick play queue.

But you know that we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl.

What the ****, fee.

MechMaster059, on 16 June 2024 - 10:27 PM, said:

I figured destroying an IS XL side torso also destroying the mech has been a thing since the beginning. I didn't know you could also crit them out but it makes sense that would be possible as well.

I disagree with the TT rules on this for MWO. I think it's bad for MWO because it contributes to excessively short TTK and thus snowballing. Snowballing is bad because it makes the rest of the match feel like a hopeless waste of time for the remaining players on the losing team.

My point is that the referencing to TT rules sits a bit oddly with a complaint about a case where MWO does follow it more closely (and even makes a small adjustment to avoid engine-crit-out kills, which can happen even to a STD engine in TT). I think you can make your case in regards to the balance of alpha fire purely in MWO terms and probably have avoided half this reflexive 'but MWO isn't the TT game' responses.

[Tarl Cabot]

MechMaster059, on 16 June 2024 - 10:27 PM, said:

I figured destroying an IS XL side torso also destroying the mech has been a thing since the beginning. I didn't know you could also crit them out but it makes sense that would be possible as well.

I disagree with the TT rules on this for MWO. I think it's bad for MWO because it contributes to excessively short TTK and thus snowballing. Snowballing is bad because it makes the rest of the match feel like a hopeless waste of time for the remaining players on the losing team.

The changes I proposed would still be a severe penalty for losing a ST with an XL engine. Besides whatever weapons/heat sinks were lost from the ST and arm, the mech would have an additional -2 internal heat sinks, -20% heat capacity, and -30% move speed.

=

When Clans went live the non-lethal ST penalties did not exist, only the death penalty after losing both ST. The first penalty w/loss of 1st ST was 20% heat dissipation introduced after several months of going live, then movement/agility much later then dissipation penalty went to 40%. LFE hadn't gone live yet so it was Omni's Clan XL vs IS STD/XL Instant Death). And a few times Chris said they would be looking at normalizing the engine penalties, to bring XL inline with the cXL/LFE but that never occurred. The big one that affected both cXL and LFE happened when they removed the dissipation penalty from the top of the Heat Bar, which had originally been set to be removed from the bottom.

XL should be normalized first with the LFE and cXL, meaning a mech would not die with the lost of the first ST. An example of how those non-redline non-lethal penalties could look like.

Tarl Cabot, on 16 November 2020 - 06:59 PM, said:

This +1.

PGI is utilizing only a portion of the engine crit rules and heatscale. Add that for any players running an IS trial mech or purchasing trial/champion/etc IS mechs w/isXL, even with the heat bar sitting at 0% isXL is instant death w/loss of a ST, whereas for cXL and the couple of mechs w/LFE it isn't. And it would make IS Omnimechs viable instead of players targeting a ST instead of CT/cockpit or both ST/legs to kill said mech. (CT/cockpit/both legs still needed for STD too ).

isXL 40% Engine loss heat capacity / x% loss heat dissipation / 25% movement
cXL 25-30% Engine loss heat capacity/ x% loss heat dissipation / 20% movement
LFE 15-20% Engine loss heat capacity/ x% loss heat dissipation / 15% movement

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 17 June 2024 - 11:02 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Nine-Ball, on 17 June 2024 - 11:07 AM, said:

The only skill required is learning how to aim fast accurately, everything outside of that is knowledge of the mechanics and maps.

I mean this seems a bit reductive because this game would be just the knowledge of the mechanics and maps and trades crosshair placement for more raw aim skill.

[Void Angel]

Er, what is there in games aside from aiming fast (which you still need in MWO,) mechanics, and maps?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Nine-Ball, on 17 June 2024 - 01:23 PM, said:

Reflexes -- if a game which lets you dodge all incoming fire if your fast enough, since for bog standard FPS with near-hitscan weapons it tilts more towards aiming.

Depends on what you consider dodging. Is dodging moving in reaction to or in preparation for an opponent shooting you. The former is rarely the case in this game, the latter is more plausible but is a thing even in games with hitscan like Counterstrike with the whole concept of wide swinging to abuse an opponents crosshair placement and potentially lackluster reaction/flick.

Nine-Ball, on 17 June 2024 - 01:23 PM, said:

But anyways I was more referring to standard FPS which doesn't have (outside of Arma or MWO) locational damage (outside of headshots), an emphasis on torso-twisting or even moving your legs to make use of your limited torso twisting.

I mean that qualifies as mechanics IMO no different than aiming in such a way you hide your gun from being spotted around a corner in Counterstrik, positioning yourself for anti-flash, or just being able to quickly rotate to counter a flash and flick back for a potential push.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 17 June 2024 - 01:37 PM.

[Void Angel]

Nine-Ball, on 17 June 2024 - 01:23 PM, said:

Reflexes -- if a game which lets you dodge all incoming fire if your fast enough, since for bog standard FPS with near-hitscan weapons it tilts more towards aiming.



The whole conversation recently has been about skill, well technically talent since skill is the combination of knowledge and talent. But anyways I was more referring to standard FPS which doesn't have (outside of Arma or MWO) locational damage (outside of headshots), an emphasis on torso-twisting or even moving your legs to make use of your limited torso twisting.

I see what you're getting at, though I'm not sure that rapid aiming and rapid movement are different enough for much of a distinction. I do wholeheartedly agree that most FPS don't have the locational damage or pacing that MWO does, and this is part of what keeps people coming back to it.

I'd also say that skill is a combination of knowledge, talent, and work - I can be as talented a musician as you like, but if I don't practice very much I can be outdone by a modestly talented musician who does the work.

PS: The shift toward skill has been in response to a certain someone's trying to use bad evidence to prove a silly claim. I think we're supposed to be arguing about his "intelligence," now, but...

Edited by Void Angel, 17 June 2024 - 06:42 PM.

[ambosen]

Bud Crue, on 16 June 2024 - 06:03 AM, said:

No disrespect intended

If you don't mean disrespect why do you immediately start with an indefensible claim and pretend it has any resemblance to reality?

This very thread contains many of those arguments. Did you not read a single post in it?

[Thorqemada]

Nine-Ball, on 15 June 2024 - 02:07 PM, said:

Not really -- the skill level of bad and new players is always the same. The skill gap has increased because the top players are always improving.

That i doubt strongly - my guess is that they now face even more unbalanced opponents that falter away right soon for the inconsistence of their teams and builds and the snowball effect will do the rest.

###

MWO was at its best up to 2017 when one of the first infamous rebalance patches happenend.
It was even better b4 superquirking bcs quirking was madness!
MWO was better when PP Alphas had around 30 damage and only SRM could do more but were spread.
It was the best when the match between a Centurion and a Hunchback was durabitliy vs damage and both had an equal success chance!

+++

Aiming is a little more than point and click - only slow projectile speed weapons need something that is worth to be called aiming - everything else is not aiming - its moving a mouse cursor over a pixel and dont care for almost anything that relates to aiming while unleashing damage!

Real aiming is a mastery that the least amount of weapons used in MWO are depending on!
Point and click is the most rudimentary and least skillful way to hit something!!!



No GOG, no buy!

Edited by Thorqemada, 18 June 2024 - 07:21 AM.

[feeWAIVER]

Thorqemada, on 18 June 2024 - 07:11 AM, said:

Aiming is a little more than point and click - only slow projectile speed weapons need something that is worth to be called aiming - everything else is not aiming - its moving a mouse cursor over a pixel and dont care for almost anything that relates to aiming while unleashing damage!

Real aiming is a mastery that the least amount of weapons used in MWO are depending on!
Point and click is the most rudimentary and least skillful way to hit something!!!

If this were true, then the Lightning Gun in Quake would get no respect.

[Void Angel]

And "aiming" with a firearm is just aligning the sight picture over your target and pulling the trigger. Why, that's not aiming at all - it's the most rudimentary and least skillfull way to hit something!!! Only grenade launchers and hand grenades are aiming,,,

[East Indy]

torsie, on 16 June 2024 - 09:48 AM, said:

I mechs werent losing components from stray projectile.

Getting little random slices by laser, being bombarded by missiles when you were spotted or moving between cover to get for example into brawling range, were not super risky and did not mean you are out of fight before you even get to play.

At least for me it was so much more!

This is player feedback worth its weight in gold. It's clear what you enjoy and what interferes with your expectation of what the game should feel like.

Quote

I am not very good at this game

That doesn't disqualify your opinion at all. Jaime Griesemer of Bungie's heyday is one of the smartest devs and he's famously terrible at Halo.

The hard truth of game design is that skilled players aren't necessarily good designers. In fact, they're more likely to be well-informed terrible designers because they're focused in and invested in the current state of the game, regardless of whether it's ideal.