269 replies to this topic

[Super Mono]

Is there going to be any analysis of how player aimed weapons affect the balance of the game? It's a very large departure from how the tabletop handles weapons but I don't see it brought up much as a factor for how MWO plays and how it affects mech customization.

[Farmer]

It means someone is paying attention, even if it's not the people we initially wanted. But PAR has been kind to MWO in the past. This is a big step for exposure.

[MCXL]

Super Mono, on 05 November 2012 - 08:19 PM, said:

Is there going to be any analysis of how player aimed weapons affect the balance of the game? It's a very large departure from how the tabletop handles weapons but I don't see it brought up much as a factor for how MWO plays and how it affects mech customization.

Yes. Chapter Four, I think. Touching on accuracy in Chapter Three but nothing substantial.

Edited by MCXL, 05 November 2012 - 08:40 PM.

[Chiggins]

Wow what a great post. Tons of great stuff to read and learn about here, thanks so much for writing it!

If I could make one tiny suggestion - this part needs a small adjustment: "Its total cycle time is 4 seconds, (1sec long shot and 3 sec of CD) , so we divide 60 by 4, getting us 15 shots. Now to find our per diceroll stats."

That was where my brain hit a speed-bump and I sat staring for some time, because I couldn't intuit why you were dividing by six to get "diceroll" stats. Something like this might help... "...so we divide 60 by 4, getting us 15 shots. Now that we have calculated how much heat and damage is done over 60 seconds, we just divide by 6 to show us how much damage and heat our sim weapons would do in one TT 10-second turn."

I promise I'm not just trying to pick nits. I'm a teacher by trade, and there is so much good stuff here I can't help but try and help iron out that one tiny smudge.

Edited by Chiggins, 05 November 2012 - 08:41 PM.

[tankermottind]

I think another thing to keep in mind that since the number of criticals is the same for all mech chassis like on the tabletop (a dubious choice IMO), critical-hogging items like Inner Sphere DHS become more difficult to justify as the weight of your mech increases. With assault mechs like the Awesome, if you're going to only get a 40% increase from three times the criticals, DHS become very hard to justify, especially since heat dissipation in general is very poor compared to pretty much any other implementation of BattleTech or MechWarrior ever.

[Accuso]

i do like the thinking process behind your post...
but could you please explain the math inside a little bit more... i think most people people will find it pretty hard to understand... especially because you are using abbreviations in an odd way without clearing the operands :-D

no offense! btw... i would love to see a post about the weapon relations... also could you upload your spreadsheet so that people can try out things themselves and see where they get :-D

[MCXL]

I always got **** in school for not showing my work The problem with doing math in your head I guess.

After I finish Chapter Three, I'll give the math in chapter one another pass to make it a bit more clear what I'm doing.

tankermottind, on 05 November 2012 - 08:42 PM, said:

...I think another thing to keep in mind that since the number of criticals...

I didn't want to go into the balance of the critical system or weapons, I'm at this point focused on the design decisions that were made in the Heat system (and in chapter three the player experience and broader game). You certainly have a valid point though.

Edited by MCXL, 05 November 2012 - 09:16 PM.

[Ansel]

Super Mono, on 05 November 2012 - 08:19 PM, said:

Is there going to be any analysis of how player aimed weapons affect the balance of the game? It's a very large departure from how the tabletop handles weapons but I don't see it brought up much as a factor for how MWO plays and how it affects mech customization.

Just something you might be interested in.

Converting the "dicerolls" to "hitscan" directly has a very interesting and unintuitive effect.

When playing a TT game the common modifiers for short medium and long range are 5, 7, and 9, generaly speaking of course. You could fine tune the system to give the probable hit % from all of the possible dicerolls but there really is not a need for the example so i'll keep it simple.

This would then determine the % of damage dealt over a certen range, (very) roughly 80%/50%30%.

So a ML would do roughly 4 damage at short range, 2.5 damage at medium range, and 1.5 damage at it's long ranges.

Now we get to the unintuitive part.

You would then gain a bonus to damage aginst parts that have more "armor" when other parts of the mech are more damaged.

This is to simulate the probability of hitting the H/LT,RT/CT/LL,RL/RA,LA/ after the % chance to hit, since you roll to "hit" in TT and then roll to see "where you hit" and the "dicerolls" favor hitting the arms and legs first then the LT/RT then the CT and finally the Head.

So shooting the legs would give a %increase in damage to other parts of the mech that have more "armor" left on them. incentivising you to shoot the arms and legs of the mech first which corrisponds with TT shooting the legs and arms more often through the "dicerolls".

[MCXL]

An interesting proposal, but I think representing the accuracy of weapons is a flawed approach.

And yes, I know that's exactly what PGI has done.

[Ansel]

MCXL, on 05 November 2012 - 09:59 PM, said:

An interesting proposal, but I think representing the accuracy of weapons is a flawed approach.

And yes, I know that's exactly what PGI has done.

It's not really a proposal, more of an interesting thought experiment in directly translating "dicerolls" from TT battletech to "realtime".

Edit: I just want to point out that it isn't a system that should or even could be used, as it makes no sence to kill a mech "faster" by shooting the legs and arms off first.

Edited by Ansel, 05 November 2012 - 10:04 PM.

[MCXL]

I'll get there eventually. I promise.

[MCXL]

Before I start I just want to say I have NO IDEA why some text is gray and some is white on this forum, something about nonstandard formatting makes text appear white, and it bothers the **** out of me. PGI FIX PLZ :<

Chapter Three: Power To The Player

So, in chapter one, we looked at the changes PGI has made to the heat system specifically and in chapter two we looked at player build choices, and the effectiveness of different builds in the current and possible heat system.

This chapter we will be going much deeper into player perception, and player choices, player action, and the design decisions that have been made, or still need to be made about them.

The sections of this chapter are:

• Section One: Player Perception
  
• Section Two: Player Choice
  
• Section Three: Investing in the Mechwarrior Market
  
• Section Four: What can the Player Do?
  
• Section Five: Here we are again!

Section One: Player Perception

(I can see forever)

Perception is a potent factor in determining or effecting how a player will make choices in a game. A prime example to draw on is, "the" free to play game League of Legends.

Before I dive into examples, if you don't know what League is like, that's O K, I will be talking about MWO here, but league as an online competitive team based F2P sorta makes it hit the spot from a similar market standpoint.

Those of you that are familiar with the league of legends scene might be familiar with this scenario:

"Champion X is under powered, no one plays him"

The champion will receive no changes for months, and then possibly get a extremely minor buff (In MWO terms, something like increasing Medium Laser range by 5 meters)

All of a sudden the forums are on fire, "Champion X is UNSTOPPABLE" or, "This game is BROKEN and Champion X is OP AS **** *** BALLS!" etc etc.

The effect here isn't one of actual change but rather a change in community perception. The truth is that either,

Champion X was OP the whole time and the player base didn't understand that because he was never played.

OR

Champion X was not OP before and still isn't OP, but because they are unfamiliar to the player base, they lack a reliable strategy against them.

Game Designers can't assume that a player base is stupid, no matter how cynical they are. But people have a tendency to see only whats in front of them, and most games these days can only present a fraction of their content at any given time. In player driven PvP games, this can lead to a cycle where players actually Homogenize tactics. Or pretty much this:

Ghosth, on 05 November 2012 - 07:13 PM, said:

If you can't beat em, time to join em.

Recently people have been referring to this as the Meta Game, though I don't honestly think that's the accurate term for it.

Players inherently mimic successful play,

"A team of Gausscats beat me, so I WILL BUILD A GAUSSCAT!"

develops into

"I play as a Gausscat and I won so IT MUST BE GOOD!"

then finally,

"Gausscats are good and I was beaten by a team that used LRMS, that means LRMS ARE OP!"

See what I am talking about here?

The issue isn't a change in how the game is made, but in how the game is played. This is honestly why PGI has been so tight lipped about weapon balance and heat and so forth, because they think that in the turmoil of a early release game, the player base honestly is mostly riding on waves of perception. Add in the fact that currently there is no way of gauging overall player effectiveness via a matchmaking/ranking system and suddenly even players with a 90% win rate aren't a reliable source of balance information.

Right now PGI is working on making sure that everyone is having a good time, and they are trying not to overreact to player outcry, however, since this is beta, players are offering up even more advice than normal, and some of us are using numbers and facts to make our points and not our perceptions.

Looking at League of Legends (Clash of Fates) once again, while the current 'Meta' has been thoroughly in place for about a year and a half now, it took about that long for the competitive scene to land upon it. The game as it stood on launch was wholly different. Additionally champions as a whole at that point were generally speaking numerically stronger.

Morello, one of the Lead Designers of the game since just about the beginning has talked extensively on the power of player perception, and how invisible power is very dangerous from a balance perspective. Passives, Auras, Base statistics, those sorts of things that are not, "I hit a button and awesome happened!" The problem with stats like auras and such is that the player can't SEE what effect they are having, and so even if its winning them the game, they will still feel relatively weak. I would love to post a link to one of his posts here, but the League of Legends forums are about as advanced as this thing:

As player perception moving platform at best, trying to outright react to the community can be a difficult thing. One of the many reasons that game companies have been historically tight lipped is because saying nothing leaves nothing to react to. PGI certainly has engaged with the community more than the vast majority of developers, but nothing that sets a real precedent, and discussion of the game system is rare outside of official, 'News' type posts.

Player perception drives how we play, how we develop and particularly how we as players give feedback.

To editorialize a bit here, before I started this series of posts, I thought that LRMs were not stronger than other weapon types on an overall numbers basis, and I was wrong. Again whether they are 'over powered', 'under powered', or 'balanced' isn't my call: Since the midpoint isn't for me to judge, that's PGI's prerogative. I do however cede that when crunching the numbers, I realized that I had a perception bias.

Now all that said, that doesn't mean that a designer should just ignore feedback for a set duration of time. Chaos still will have truth within, and finding that truth and sussing it out is important, because, (this is another important one) player perception is the most important factor for the success of a game like this.

I don't have a lot of work to do in this area to prove it. F2P games rely on people continuing to play them and spread the word. Since there is no fee to enter, then a dwindling player base means the game becomes financially insolvent, and therefore crumbles under its own weight. So if the players feelthat MWO is a buggy, poorly balanced game, they will move on, and it will fail. It doesn't matter if the players are right or wrong, the perception is what matters for this games success.

How do we fight perception problems? Well onward to,

Section Two: Player Choice

(I choose you AS7-D!)

This and section three will sort of bleed together but that's Okie Dokie!

So player choice. I have talked about it in my previous posts and we have finally come to it.

I'm excited!

We can't talk about every aspect of the choices a player makes, because talking about every choice of the player is akin to trying to see every choice you make. How many choices do you make in a day? Boiling down choice is ******* hard. You are choosing to continue reading, at any point in this sentence you could stop, but you choose to keep going. Maybe it's time to go to the bathroom, or get a drink, or make a pizza, or feed the cat. Every action you take is a choice, even if that action is inaction, or the continuation of a previous action.

A college freshman might say that I'm being, "Deep" (man) but really I'm just being overly analytic. So to break this down this section will focus on two types of choice.

Active choices and passive choices.

Active choices are ones that a player thinks about. What role to fill, strategy to employ, enemy to fire at, what is the best part of a mech to aim at etc.

Passive choices would be things like, which way to circle a mech, or what constitutes an opportunity (that is when you feel you can press the advantage)

The interesting thing here is just about anything that falls into the passive choice category, can be elevated to an active choice, but most active choices cannot be moved into the passive realm. Note that the way I break these two examples up actually says a lot about me as a player. Looking at the choices I made to put things, I would say I made an error. "...strategy to employ, enemy to fire at, what is the best part of a mech to aim at..." can all be made as passive choices, but I can't treat them as passive choices. Design is weird.

The active choices are how you engage a player. The more a player thinks about what defines them in the game world, the more ingrained they become. As time has gone on, games have started to integrate player choice as a core aesthetic again, such as the Mass Effect series.

I don't want to go to deep down the road of tears left by ME3, because that is ******* quicksand, but it's a perfect example of what NOT to do.

In the Mass Effect games, choice was one of the pillars of game play. Certainly the choices presented weren't revolutionary, most were fork in the road type choices. But choice and consequence was something that the protagonist of those games has to live with. Moral decision making invested players in Commander Sheppard, so when the final choice disregarded every choice the player had made to that point, it immediately de-invested the player from the narrative, "All those choices were meaningless? What the ****!"

Now moral, or narrative choices are not a part of MWO's game play (yet? Community warfare might change this a bit.) but all choices that provoke thought get the player ingrained in the source material. The internal struggle of a choice is what provides a person a way into the games world.

Not all choices are created equal. If you have 6 minutes, or so this episode of Extra Credits outlines some interesting things about choice. I don't agree with everything they say (and EC can be extremely high and mighty/pious) but the episode on choice is to dang pertinent not to link it.

What it boils down to is that currently in MWO all non aesthetic choices are calculations, but more than that they are actually numerically simple.

The point of "balance" is to give the player meaningful choices. With the heat scale as it is now there is not a meaningful choice, its pretty much stay cool or die. Now that statement isn't problematic, until you realize that the only way to stay cool and deal damage is to build along certain, very narrow, paths.

This leads me into something I mentioned in chapter one, which is the fallacy of choice. There are situations where the player thinks that they have a choice, but in fact they don't. Rate of fire is one of the areas where this can be really apparent.

If we use my earlier proposal and moved to a 5 second turn duration (double HS efficiency scale) but leave cycle times as they are now we run into a design problem.

That same awesome as before, (the 3 ERPPC model) If I fired once every 5 seconds, I stay heat neutral, but what if I am facing an identical mech.

No matter what, assuming the same hit percentage, whoever pushes their mech to the DPS limit first (rides the heat scale up and then starts shooting every 5 seconds when max ROF will overheat them) will have an advantage, all other factors being equal. Because there are currently no disincentives for running high into the heat percentages, it is more advantageous to ride things up in a one on one, because you pull ahead. This gap only widens if the damage happens to disable the other mech somehow (shooting off the PPC arm in this case)

The only choice is to do it faster than the other player, and then both players are doing it at once, at the beginning of the fight.

That's. Not. Choice.

From a design standpoint, the heat system right now doesn't offer meaningful choices other than:

• Heat efficiency of a build
  
• When to overheat

Now once again the question of PGI is what the goal is in the design of the heat system. Do they want the player to have to make meaningful choices in how they manage heat? I think right now you lose a microscopic amount of cooling efficiency at the upper end of the scale, but I've yet to confirm this. If there were penalties, along the lines that TT had or even previous Mechwarrior titles, (such as a degradation of accuracy or movement speed) then heat in its current form might become unmanageable for a player.

This might actually be a goal for the designers, but I don't know.

Player choice is really something that can be talked about for ages, and I don't want to go too deep into it because I think I've said all that needs to be said about it.

Section Three: Investing in the Mechwarrior Market

("Gank and bank baby!")

So I have talked quite a bit about getting a player invested in a game through choice. As a F2P game MWO wants people to keep playing for as long as possible, which means getting them to invest, both fiscally and chronologically.

I actually don't want to draw many conclusions in this area because so much will still change in the overall game structure. The planned additions of more game types in addition to the community warfare aspect basically means that measuring player investment right now is difficult at best.

Right now if we take a look at the systems in place to keep people playing.

• Fun, piloting a mech is fun, no way around that.
  
• Customization
  
• Earning goals (the grind)

That's it. Because the game is in an early state there are few systems in place to get a player to really dig in.

Looking at each one in turn.

1.

Fun is a tough thing to measure. Certainly the vast majority of people who come on the MWO forums enjoy the game, even if they arent satisfied with it. Coming on here proves that they care about the state of the game, and so they are invested.

Sorry boys and gals, PGI has their hooks in ya, (me too) :<

2.

This is the area I am gonna focus on, because I am so darn focused on player choice.
By limiting build diversity in the way that PGI has, either intentionally or not, they have severely limited the amount a player can experiment and feel successful That satisfaction of swapping out weapons and launching, is very quickly crushed when a, "standard" build of MWO beats you into the dirt.
The heat system in it's current form, actually punishes player choice, and again forces you to build in very specific, niche ways.

Drawing on my own experience, I recently did some significant experimentation with the CN9-AH trying just about every big hitting energy weapon in the arm, but found that no matter what I put in it was always less effective than a similar build without the big guns. Speaking as a player, it's very frustrating to feel that doing something individual hinders my performance significantly, and I think most people would agree with that.

We will be getting visual customization, which is pretty hard to f up, but as it is a system that will inevitably force a financial investment to get the desired result, you can prevent people from starting down that path toward investment. Again this isn't in our hands yet, so I wait to pass real judgement on it till I see what F2P players can do to feel like a mech is made theirs.

3.

Hard as it might be to understand when we talk about it on a sheet like this, the grind is very much a reason to play the game. Just like leveling a character on a MMO or getting a paycheck from... you know, real work, people find an actual satisfaction in the sensation of working toward and achieving that goal.
This is going to be the primary draw of this game when it is completed, because community warfare will introduce what amounts to a competitive grind. You earn what others have: Fun (competition) and grind (work to achieve) plus choice (If we choose what our goal is, like what planet to take etc.)
Right now though the grind is simple in scope. Earn BILLZ; get mechs.

These three types of player satisfaction are directly tied to each other.

• I grind to get my brand new Awxome. (1, 3)
  
• I buy the Awxome. (3)
  
• I paint the Awxome to make it "mine" (2, maybe 1 if you love to color )
  
• I play a game (1)
  
• I pull out the PPCs to put in medium lasers (2)
  
• I start grinding for the next mech to start the cycle anew (3)

That's the whole of MWO, and I really think that the only real problem in the cycle right now is that build phase, because there just isn't a real choice.

Section Four: What can the Player Do?

(aside from watch amazing areal footage?)

Honestly, this topic has kept me up in bed sometimes.

What can a player do to improve the game they love?

Well first off you can make it clear that you want more choices. Build choices, mech choices, avatar choices. Real choices, not just calculations, but things with real trade offs that promote asymmetric game play over number crunching. Or what choice your looking for.

Ask for what you want, but in a reasonable manner, point out why. What value does the choice or change you want add to the game for everyone, and why is it more important then the changes others are asking for.

Beyond speaking clearly and rationally, with a F2P game the only other option is to quit.

That's where the investment comes in though because if you are truly invested in the game, (and many people are with the founders package on a financial level) you have to be willing to walk away from that money, from that time, from the devotion you show to a game that has you grind.

Section Five: Here we are again!

(I think i might be hurting myself by thinking to hard)

This post to me fees much more opinion tainted than my other two, but when talking about design decisions, you can't really point to equations, and that makes talking about design tough. I know that one of the criteria for being a great game designer is having skin as thick as an elephant, and I think that's one of my weakest areas, so I understand when the PGI devs steer clear of posting in a discussion like this one.

This is not me calling Paul and the team out. In fact the discussion that's happening without them might be more valuable if they don't come in and drum up the masses, (because everyone wants to post where the devs post, it's ok, we all know that PGI peeps are pretty much rock stars to the MWO initiated.)

What I really hope this chapter promotes, is more thought from YOU as the player, on what your role to PGI is. Section One, and Section Two deal mostly with design principals, but Section Three and Four are all about you and I as players.

So think about it, I mean, really think. Because as much as PGI still needs to tell us what their goals are for how the combat system should feel, we also need to define what we want as players, and make that clear to PGI.

In Chapter Four, we will be diving into other areas and likely require me to have this thread renamed. We are gonna start talking about control, player systems, and weapon balance, and yea some more about heat.

EDIT: Something is wrong with the ******* forum editing thing, and I can't fix little formatting things that bug the heck out of me, like inconsistent line spacing. Up the ******* walls, is where I am headed.


Until the next one
-MCXL

Edited by MCXL, 06 November 2012 - 01:19 AM.

[Farmer]

Dude, we seriously need to get you a gold plated TI83 or something, man. You and MR both.

MCXL, on 05 November 2012 - 10:46 PM, said:

Before I start I just want to say I have NO IDEA why some text is gray and some is white on this forum, something about nonstandard formatting makes text appear white, and it bothers the **** out of me. PGI FIX PLZ :<

According to their internal testing, grey special text was OP, so we're getting white instead.

[Tuhalu]

The implementation of different styles of weapons is actually one of the good things about MWO. ie. ballistics with travel time and path drop and damage drop-off, lasers with effect time and damage drop-off, missiles with lock-on times and/or travel times/paths. PPCs are funky because they have the travel time of ballistics and the damage drop-off, but not the path drop.

These differences are good because they allow players with different skill sets to find their favorite weapon mechanic and go with that. However, they do require the developers to balance one weapon type against another. ie. Ballistics vs Lasers vs PPCs vs SRMS vs LRMs.

Ballistic weapons and PPCs deal their entire damage to one location per shot, but require the pilot to calculate the lead on a shot. The bigger the damage per shot, the easier it is to take out an entire location with a series of carefully aimed shots. The lower the damage per shot, the better it is to just spray fire onto the target and wait for it to build up. If a friendly runs into the path of one, they take the full damage.

The LB-10X autocannon is slightly different in that it's a shotgun type weapon. One shot, multiple small hits spread over an area. Otherwise, it's the same as other ballistic/ppc weapons.

Lasers deal damage over time, but have a visible beam that allows the pilot to correct their shot somewhat (and the target to manoeuver to reduce damage to any one location!). This can be both a help and a hindrance. No matter the size of laser, it's a game of trying to keep the laser on target for the whole duration. The smallest version of a laser has a slightly lower effect time, as do the pulse versions of lasers. This makes them more accurate in the sense that they need to keep on target for a shorter length of time. If a friendly runs into the path of fire, you can redirect your laser fire, saving them from most of the damage.

SRMs fire directly forwards with some spread due to the number fired. The further away the enemy is, the less that are likely to hit the target. It is basically impossible to focus all of the weapons damage into one location. Like the LB-10X autocannon, it's very much a shotgun type weapon.Unlike the LB-10X each missile does splash damage. Anyone within a few meters of the explosion point of an SRM will take damage. Once an SRM is fired, anyone that runs into the path of a missile will be hit, friend or foe.

Streak SRMs are highly guided versions of regular SRMs. They require a "target-lock" to fire, but then are able to track their target to a large extent when fired. Everything else about them is the same as a regular SRM.

LRMs can be dumb-fired like an SRM, shooting directly forwards with no ability to guide themselves. More normally, you hold your aim on the target and wait for a "target-lock" so that your missiles will arc into the target, going around the terrain features. This can be done whether or not you have a direct line of sight to the enemy. However, due to the travel time and the distances involved, it's entirely possible for the target to break your target lock and cause your missiles to become unguided (they simply travel straight to the last-known location of the target). It's basically impossible to focus all of the weapons damage into one location. LRM missiles have splash damage and will deal damage to anyone within a few meters of their impact. Anyone that runs into the path of a missile will be hit, friend or foe, unless they are within 180 metres of the firing mech (in which case the missiles are unarmed and will hit, but deal no damage).

LRMs can have their tracking improved by NARC beacons, TAG and Artemis IV. NARC and Artemis IV can be defeated by ECM (at least in TT, waiting to see how it works in MWO!). If NARC or TAG is in effect on a target up until the LRMs hit the target, then the LRMs are effectively "fire and forget". Otherwise, you must personally keep a lock on the target to keep them guided.



My major problem is that these differences, with their benefits and drawbacks do not seem to be systematically accounted for in the changes the designers have made in the convertion from tabletop to computer. More often than not, a change is made with a systemic error that leads the designers to make another systemic change in an attempt to correct it.

Their biggest error is trying to change the pace of the game without changing all the affected mechanics (increasing armor and rate of fire by roughly a factor of 2 without increasing ammunition and heat dissipation by roughly a factor of 2!). The intent of letting players fire more times without making fights end sooner was and is good. But it has led to a bias towards energy weapons and low heat per damage weapons. Of course, they are "fixing" the low heat capacity of small and medium lasers, but not of the ballistic weapons with the same advantage (Gauss, LB-10X, AC/10).

Their second biggest error is tweaking temporarily under/over-performing weapons before all of the mechanics are implemented and then not re-tweaking them when new mechanics arrived! LRMs, I'm looking at you.

Their third biggest error is in giving the smaller versions of a weapon type far too great an increase in ROF. An AC/2 should never have equal or greater DPS than an AC/5 and AC/10, allowing them to do similar damage for less tonnage and higher range. Small Lasers shouldn't fire far more often than their medium and large versions, allowing them to do similar damage for a fraction of the tonnage. SRMs and LRMs are a fair indication of the appropriate difference. An SRM2 fires faster, but does not do more DPS than an SRM6. An LRM5 fires faster, but does not do more DPS than an LRM20. The difference in their overall DPS is correct relative to their tonnage, range, heat cost, critical requirements and the use of a hard point.

Edit: Balancing weapon types against each other is HARD because of all the different factors, but I can't see that the designers have actually done anything about it. The errors I mentioned have been about mistakes that affect everything or mistakes that affect the balance within a weapon type. It would be interesting to hear what changes they have made that the designers think counter-balance changes in weapon type mechanics.

Edited by Tuhalu, 05 November 2012 - 11:52 PM.

[Draco Argentum]

MCXL, on 05 November 2012 - 10:46 PM, said:

or make a pizza

Way ahead of you, I'm already eating one.

If it can be solved with a spreadsheet its not a choice, its a research tax. Yes it is still technically a choice to use a mathematically worse build, but its a fool's choice. For a game to be balanced and have choices at the very least you need several axes in play. The moment the player is able to resolve it to a single axis they have a clear best choice.

This is why weapon damage is so fought over. In theory there is damage, weight, crits, ammo, heat. But in practice you can collapse a lot of those factors and just look at the DPS of one build vs another. Its rather like WoW talent builds. In theory there are heaps of choices. But some players whipped out the spreadsheets and condensed them into maximised DPS and it turns out you hard hardly any choices.

The pilot system is a good counter example. You have choices because each one effects different things. B isn't 1.1xA, B is something totally different and not directly comparable. This is good and should be expanded into the rest of the game.

Endo steel is the opposite. Either you have the crits and should use it or you don't so you don't. There isn't a real choice there.

[MCXL]

Another thing I am gonna really hammer in Chapter 4 is progression and Tech level, because lets be honest, unless something is better it cant be called an, 'Upgrade'

Also I want a pizza so bad now.

Farmer, on 05 November 2012 - 11:19 PM, said:

Dude, we seriously need to get you a gold plated TI83 or something, man. You and MR both.

I don't use a calculator.

All in head or by hand.

And before someone calls me old, I'm 24, all this stuff is mindbogglingly, (holy **** this is in spellchecker?!?!?!?) eazy math is all.

Edited by MCXL, 06 November 2012 - 12:03 AM.

[Draco Argentum]

MCXL, on 06 November 2012 - 12:00 AM, said:

Another thing I am gonna really hammer in Chapter 4 is progression and Tech level, because lets be honest, unless something is better it cant be called an, 'Upgrade'

Lets get it out there. I am against vertical progression. It does bad things to games and makes things feel grindy because you need it, as opposed to want it.

That being said its BattleTech based so it is unavoidable.

[Farmer]

MCXL, on 06 November 2012 - 12:00 AM, said:

And before someone calls me old, I'm 24, all this stuff is mindbogglingly, (holy **** this is in spellchecker?!?!?!?) eazy math is all.

I know. But the gold plated TI83 would distract you with FallingDown and you can finally get some rest. Also, golden calculator. You'd be the only person with that level of bling. Someone hating on your mental math? Pull that sucker out. Instant win.

[MCXL]

Farmer, on 06 November 2012 - 12:13 AM, said:

I know. But the gold plated TI83 would distract you with FallingDown and you can finally get some rest. Also, golden calculator. You'd be the only person with that level of bling. Someone hating on your mental math? Pull that sucker out. Instant win.

Fair nuff; bling is always good.

Draco Argentum, on 06 November 2012 - 12:12 AM, said:

Lets get it out there. I am against vertical progression. It does bad things to games and makes things feel grindy because you need it, as opposed to want it.

That being said its BattleTech based so it is unavoidable.

Vertical progression isn't bad when it is done properly.

Going back to League of legends, a Level 30 summoner has numerous advantages over a level 1 summoner:

• More 'Summoner Spells'
  
• Access to runes
  
• The mastery system

The power progression serves as a gateway to focus new players on fundamentals, which is a big positive in the design of the game.


I don't want to steal the thunder from my next chapter, but what it basically will boil down too is new players should have protection from tech stomps, or there needs to be a Battle Value system in place, otherwise the game will never be feasible to balance properly.

Edited by MCXL, 06 November 2012 - 12:33 AM.

[Draco Argentum]

MCXL, on 06 November 2012 - 12:33 AM, said:

Vertical progression isn't bad when it is done properly.

Going back to League of legends, a Level 30 summoner has numerous advantages over a level 1 summoner:

• More 'Summoner Spells'
  
• Access to runes
  
• The mastery system

The power progression serves as a gateway to focus new players on fundamentals, which is a big positive in the design of the game.

Yes but that can be done is a less vertical way. I redid the xp system to remove the vertical advancement, among other things.

http://mwomercs.com/...mech-xp-system/


Tech should be similar. Nothing sucks more than having your favourite peice of tech be low level and you have to stop useing it when you level up. Thats why PGI's choice not to have tiers of mechs was so good. I'd be very annoyed if the Raven was supposed to be a low tier light that I wasn't meant to use in serious matches.