52 replies to this topic

[LordNothing]

pbiggz, on 31 March 2025 - 07:31 AM, said:

I do think frankly we have too many variants, and it makes it much more likely that we end up with dead mechs, because with so much overlap, some mechs are just better than others, but its difficult/impossible to take things away like that, especially things that PGI is still to this day, selling for real money.

the idea is you dont actually remove the variants, they just become builds instead.

[LordNothing]

Horseman, on 31 March 2025 - 01:40 AM, said:

The problem that runs into is that hardpoints, their locations and quirks are meant to balance each other. The massive hardpoint inflation that such a move would cause would force the quirks to be removed, making chassis in the same tonnage bracket much less distinct from one another and constraining the meta to be 1-2 builds per chassis. Further, it would reduce differences between chassis to mostly just hardpoint positions, which would mean some chassis would be just strictly better than others, further constraining the meta.

End result, a handful of the same meta variants and builds dominate the game, leading to a perpetually stale and unfixable state of the meta and game balance.

PGI went in that direction before - remember the dequirkening in 2017? - and that did not go over well. Ultimately it's better to have individual variants with distinct strengths and limitations rather than an indistinct sludge of too samey chassis that lack individual character. It's also easier for PGI to rebalance individual under- or over-performing variants by adjusting their individual quirks.

thats why its hypothetical, as it represents a lot of work for a late stage game. work i dont think pgi or even the cauldron has the manpower to pull off in a timely fashion. it has extreme consequences. with all hardpoints valid i figure you would need to turn to weapon balance to make it playable. quirks become more generic, at least for battlemechs.

the real benefit is you only have to balance about 150 things rather than 1000+ things. and you get rid of all the useless variants of those mechs. dead variants just become bad builds.

Edited by LordNothing, 31 March 2025 - 04:50 PM.

[Horseman]

LordNothing, on 31 March 2025 - 02:49 PM, said:

the idea is you dont actually remove the variants, they just become builds instead.

No, what you propose would actually remove distinction between variants. And the massive hardpoint inflation would prevent any substantial quirks because the hardpoint count would make them too abusable. If you look at the mechs you have now, quirk strength is inversely proportional to the number of available hardpoints.

[sycocys]

Horseman, on 31 March 2025 - 09:19 AM, said:

The customization is currently a core part of the gameplay. Take it away and players WILL revolt. Such a drastic change could be fine for a hypothetical next game in the franchise, but not one that has already been established for ten years.

And at the same time this game will continue to have a near zero new player retention for the shrinking amount of new players that come in because the customization leads to massive imbalance between them and them being matched more frequently against players they shouldn't be because the tier valves need to be open to even make matches.

Based on the drop times I was seeing during NA prime the last several times I launched the game it's well past time for some pretty drastic changes to even the field enough to retain the few new players that come along as well as the non-comp type players that will be forced into matches with the higher skill/comp players just to make matches at all.

The more that the lower skilled players feel like they don't have any chance to even get into the game and learn it, the less that are going to stay around. When the MM has to run with the valves wide open just to make ~40 concurrent matches during peak hours, all the additional layers of unbalancing mechanics only serve to make that situation worse.

The tiny amount of remaining players can either decide to ride it out or start live testing new systems within the capabilities of this game's engine for a successor if PGI is still on that path. But having a peak of around 1k users between the launchers on any day is a pretty strong indicator that where the game is, isn't working.

[pbiggz]

LordNothing, on 31 March 2025 - 02:49 PM, said:

the idea is you dont actually remove the variants, they just become builds instead.

Echoing what other people are saying, but yeah, a problem with having so many variants has been that some mechs who have specific roles are outperformed by alternative variants of mechs that just happen to have more optimal hardpoint layouts and/or hitboxes. The only way to sort that issue out is straight up by taking away variants. If you just push all the hardpoints onto one variant, then every mech kind of ends up doing almost everything.

The real solution is to genuinely reduce the variant count down to 2 or 3 at most for each mech, so that different mechs genuinely fill different roles, but since again, its taking away things people may have paid for, and its disruptive, its probably never going to happen.

[a 5 year old with an Uzi]

but I like using mechlab to do really stupid things with Urbies

[VeeOt Dragon]

honestly over half the joy i get from MWO is in the Mechlab. i love to fiddle with things, find odd builds that work and are fun instead of the same cookie cutter meta over and over again. i think if it wasn't for the shear volume of mechs/variants i would have dropped the game a LONG time ago.

(one person asked why people are still in T3 or whatever, its because not everyone cares about meta. also some of us have handicaps that make things a bit more difficult. hell thats why there are times when all i use are LRM/Tbolt mechs because my hand tremors are acting up. also it has been my experience that the higher in tier i get the more boring and frustrating the game gets. i don't play games to be frustrated (hence why i am not a fan of t Souls-like games.), i play to have fun. in low tiers you get more variety in what mechs you see n the field. its just more fun over all. sadly my decidedly average *** has gotten up to T2, probably why i don't play near as often as i used to. these days i only come back for events that offer something i am interested in.)

most of the weapons themselves i think are in a fine place right now other than LRMs, those need a definite velocity buff since they are only effective on a handful of HEAVILY quirked mechs (seriously you need at least a 45% total velocity buff (quirks + skills) just to make them useful).

i want to see more mechs not less. i want to see more oddball builds not just more meta over and over again. (hell in MW5: Mercs and HBS Battletech i often do runs where i restrict myself, things like salvage only (hero mechs being the only exception). i know they are different games but its gets my point across.) its why i find the recent Solaris even so damn boring. all i see is the same damn mech/build over and over again.

hell i don't even play Clan mechs but i have little trouble with the fact that all the recent new mechs have all been clanner chassis. (still waiting on that Timberwolf MK-III and even though its a generally bad mech the Raksasha to pair it with)

thats why when someone starts talking about how "elite" they are and for others to just "git good" i just say they should try pulling the same numbers in bracket build or some other oddball loadout or even a crappy IS stock build (hell try to pull the same numbers in my Annoyance Urbie (3 L-PPC, 3 MGs with a Light engine) as you do with a Pirana or other meta light.)

[LordNothing]

pbiggz, on 04 April 2025 - 11:03 AM, said:

Echoing what other people are saying, but yeah, a problem with having so many variants has been that some mechs who have specific roles are outperformed by alternative variants of mechs that just happen to have more optimal hardpoint layouts and/or hitboxes. The only way to sort that issue out is straight up by taking away variants. If you just push all the hardpoints onto one variant, then every mech kind of ends up doing almost everything.

The real solution is to genuinely reduce the variant count down to 2 or 3 at most for each mech, so that different mechs genuinely fill different roles, but since again, its taking away things people may have paid for, and its disruptive, its probably never going to happen.

you dont really need to consolidate all the hardpoints into one chassis, there will be enough locational conflicts and geometry variants to make that nearly impossible. then you got mechs like the crab which are just the same hardpoints repeated several times. most are 5-6 hardpoing energy builds with the only major outlier being the florentine. you could easily make that 2 variants. if you can condense 5+ varients down to 2 or 3, mostly the stronger builds staying as is with the weaker builds merged. that stands to be a good way to reduce variants a lot.

for each chassis:

identify which variants perform the best, and which are mostly filler builds.

leave the strong ones alone unless you can merge them with similar variants without too much inflation. ideally where you can represent the weaker variant as a build on the stronger one, but not making the strong build any better.

consolidate the filler builds when possible. merge builds that are similar and allow more inflation on weaker variants.

identify which variants have hardpoint conflicts (eg mechs that say put a missile rack and a laser in the same location). merge these with similar variants that use that geometry. worst case scenario these become stand alone variants.

consolidate quirks and make generic any conflicting quirks.

ideally if you can get each chassis down to 4 or fewer variants, it really cuts things down.


for equipment:

actuators, targeting computers, small cockpits, compact gyro and other specific equipment become swappable (or become upgrades) to represent respective variants.

add mg arrays, and dual rack versions srms. make them available only to specific variants. this helps reduce hardpoint inflation as an alternative to stacking up hardpoints. eg an srm or machine gun boat can be represented by a strong variant without adding more hardpoints. these might come with a slot penalty that prevents it from being used as part of a more meta loadout by blocking large weapons of the usual type.

more efficient ammo bins replace ammo quirks for certain mechs with limited podspace. these can be tied to specific variants.

you can also do this:

turn mech bonuses into a slot item. then you can move them among builds and consolidate the identical variants with different/no bonuses.

make hero/special skins available across all variants (you get these for free if you own the variants they came with). eg catapult k2 and jester can be merged and the skin can be transfered.

turn custom geometry into bolt ons. perhaps make boltons enable/disable certain hardpoints so you can chose one or the other based on which bits you use. this would simplify the issue where mechs that should be merged based on performance but hardpoints would conflict.

make clan<->is conversion an upgrade (limited to chassis with both versions and locked otherwise). this unlocks respective tech, also means that you can merge clan and is versions of mechs that are similar enough to another variant and then unlock the upgrade.

allow skill point cap quirks above 91 points, so that you can buff things via the skill tree to replace quirks specific to one variant or the other. this helps close quirk disparities.


surely this is better than flat out deletion and if anything may give you more build options

Edited by LordNothing, 05 April 2025 - 02:55 AM.

[sycocys]

I like the mechlab as much as anyone, the problem is when the game's population has dropped to the point that the MM is creating around 40 concurrent matches during peak hours there is going to be little to no tier separation which only exacerbates the skill issue (and time to unlock the imbalance nodes) that occur pre-drop.

If there is any intention to retain new players to help the MM and just the game itself survive until the next iteration something that actually makes a stiff effect on balance at root levels is going to have to happen.

[a 5 year old with an Uzi]

skill node grind really does suck as does cbill cost for buying upgrades of heat sinks/structure/armor

removing mechlab to go after these is ??? on the former and "amputate leg to get rid of bunions on feet" for latter

[LordNothing]

reducing grind is probibly a good idea. they have already cut the price of skill nodes down to 500xp from 800 and they give away a lot of gsp in events now. knock that down to 400. us late game players have enough cbills to not care about those. premium time could move up to a 2x buff instead of a 1.5x buff and maybe also produce mc at 1/10000th the rate of cbills (for most matches thats single digit quantities, exceptional matches its on the order of 10s to 100s for those rare matches where you break 1 million cbills, usually fp). you could still slash the upgrade costs. the prices of older mechs, and especially the cash prices of older mechpacks. or offer roll-up packs that grant a large number (100+) of old mechs in a single affordable pack.

[Ttly]

VeeOt Dragon, on 05 April 2025 - 01:55 AM, said:

(one person asked why people are still in T3 or whatever, its because not everyone cares about meta

Oh, I meant that more in the "the system has a positive PSR gain bias, unless you're aggressively sabotaging your team. I play stupid stuff all the time and still gets it to full bar tier 1 regardless."

I mean yeah, that's just how meaningless the damn thing is to me and how detrimental it is as far as actual gameplay go as it just limits my matchmaking pool/it can't read that I have no intent of spamming meta builds over and over.

Also, people seriously can't read sarcasm in text/speedread stuff as far as this thread is telling me.
What, did no one read the OP to the point where I state that "I'm tired of looking at the same builds over and over?" and "Whoever is deciding the balance seems uninterested in fiddling with actually underused and underpowered variants/chassis/builds to the point they might as well be removed because how dare people screw their team over by playing them!" well paraphrasing anyway.
No, I'm not joining the Discord just for the balance feedback channel either.
Saying a chat room is more organized than a forum is just a rather silly thought to me.

Edited by Ttly, 06 April 2025 - 10:32 PM.

[a 5 year old with an Uzi]

It isn't actually the WORST idea and the trial mechs presence lends a little weight to the notion, the trials are really pretty okay, it's just that mechlabbing is really fun too

I did okay using trials during cadet period, they are set up well though I hated the Fafnir and wasn't really enjoying the Warhammer because LRMs feel so clunky for me

I think I ended up replicating a good chunk of the trial mechs with cbills, huntsman is fun, hunchback is good and I even kind of prefer LPL to HLL

sarcasm completely aside there is a bit of an argument to be made for "less is more", I imagine more than a few players get overwhelmed by mechlab or tripped up by bad decisions in it etc. and obviating that a bit with a variety of solid prebuilts is not a horrid idea, it's just a matter of "there is not going to be a solution that makes everyone happy and removing mechlab will upsetti the spaghetti for a lot of people"

Edited by a 5 year old with an Uzi, 09 April 2025 - 08:49 PM.