193 replies to this topic

[Sandman Nagasawa]

Umm.. Min Maxing if I've been reading the dev blogs right is going to be strongly hampered by other facets of the game design..

Pilot (player) mech specialization for one..

My distinct impresion is players ar not going to have some sort of unlimited "STable" of mech to choose from.. Your not only going to be specialized in a weight class, your going to be specialized a specific mech. Form the look of it, MWO is going to draw very heavily from the board game.. Theres going to be a great many role play style aspects here. ANd personally.. there will be some min/maxing... but I very strongly suspect that the sort of min/maxing you saw in MW-4 is simply not going to be present. Min Maxing for all of the strength it provides can also leave a player with distinct vulnerabilities. Whats more, it they will carry these vulnerabilities from game to game. Reconfiguring a mech is going to be expensive!!!! I am absolutly certain of this. A customized mech will cost more to maintain and repair. Any single player that has access to more then 2 mechs is going to be very rare. There is even a distinct possibility that during an ongoing campaign player way find themselves unable to repair all the damage froma previous fight due to a simple lack of parts..! You amy find you run out of consumables such as ammo for AC or Missles.. You might be limited to how much you can bring with you, and you end up using up your stocks as happened to the clans in the fiction on a number of occasions. Mech that are min/maxed are vulnerable to having thier weaknesses exploited. If damage is run like it is in the board game...min maxing armor will be a very foolish and stupid thing to do.. and a very good way to get yourself killed.

Either way this is moot untill we see the finished game. But I personally don't think Min/Maxing is going to be the issue thats its been in previous MW titles going back to Activision MW-2 Mercenaries..

[Thorn Hallis]

Garth Erlam, on 20 April 2012 - 08:03 AM, said:

I will probably spend more time in the final MechLab than i do actually playing, so I hope for a lot of 'min-maxing' - that said, a bad pilot is a bad pilot; it'll never come down to 'who had 2 extra armour points in their left torso instead of their right arm' - at least not from what I've seem

Great, we'll get a complete stable mechlab at release, but the actual simulation will be bugged as hell BECAUSE ALL OF THE DEVS ARE JUST LOOKING AT THEIR SHINY TOYS ALL THE TIME!

[Tyzh]

Vexgrave Lars, on 20 April 2012 - 06:31 AM, said:

If the game is balanced.. cheating should be impossible.

That's what I was saying.

Motionless, on 20 April 2012 - 08:22 AM, said:

"Breaks games." What the hell does this even mean? You say it breaks a game and then don't even BOTHER to explain what that means! You and the OP need to start explaining WHY and not just point fingers around and start labeling things as "BAD, SHOULD BE PROHIBITED." You actually need to start doing some intellectual legwork and make a real argument, I've even looked thru the thread to see if you made any argument previous to your post - you didn't.

I played MW3 online, on certain mechs in certain situations (C5 UA ICE match an avatar with no armor on left arm) we did things the OP is 'against.' Were we 'breaking' the game? I had fun, the people I played against had fun. Was this WRONGBAD FUN?!

I wont really address comparing it to loading dice, because it's ridiculous, and others already have.

Forgive me for not explaining myself better. It was 4am.

I phrased it poorly. Min/maxing doesn't break the game, it just finds the ways games are broken. It isn't evil or anything. I've always loved tinkering with things in the mechlab. I think some people just blame min/maxing for design flaws in the games they play. None of this will be an issue if the game is balanced properly.

I was just replying to Lars, and I imagine my "intellectual legwork" was good enough for that, he seems to have gotten what I was saying. Maybe he's just a nice guy, I dunno.

Edited by Tyzh, 20 April 2012 - 09:14 AM.

[Nick Makiaveli]

Mason Grimm, on 20 April 2012 - 08:08 AM, said:

I'm with Garth on this.

I LOVE stripping down mechs and building loadouts. In fact that is probably one of my favorite parts of the old Table Top game as well as every mechwarrior game that had a mechlab. Hence why I created MechSpecs. It is not just a community service its also feeding a hobby of mine; min maxing machines!

"Oh but Min Maxing breaks the game!" Really? You aren't playing it right then. I can sum a successful pilot up in three words (going back to muh old army days): Analyze, Adapt, Overcome.

While I agree with your sentiment, I think the issue some of us have is there is a difference between min/maxing and munchkinism.

Tweaking is one thing. IE sacrificing some speed for DPS or vice versa. The examples of basically stripping an arm or torso of armor etc is using the weak points of the rules system.

For example, stripping the arm of armor. So basically you are just taking off the arm before battle. If the game allowed it, people would just completely remove it to save even more weight. That works for MWO since the only use for a mech is to fight. But in the universe you might need that arm to help drag a damaged ally to cover. Or help load a salvaged mech onto a carrier for transport back to base. In other words, out of combat uses. Sure this is immersion/RP/story stuff, and some people care nothing for it, but then why even bother naming the mechs? Having hard points? Might as well play Robot Warriors and just make up anything you can dream of. Not knocking the game, I actually own the original book, but point is it isn't any where as sophisticated as BT and doesn't have a serious (ok semi-serious) sense of physics and the real world behind it.

Wow.....went completely /nerd rant there didn't I?

[Motionless]

Tyzh, on 20 April 2012 - 08:34 AM, said:

Forgive me for not elaborating. It was 4am.

I phrased it poorly. It doesn't break the game, it finds the ways games are broken. None of this will be an issue if the game is balanced properly.

I wasn't agreeing with the original post, I was just replying to Lars.
The loaded dice thing was his.

Lars was using the idea of 'load your dice' synonymously with min-maxing though. The idea of accurate planning to improve your performance on the battlefield. Yet you said min-maxing will still exist even when you can't load your dice, but not by his terms no, you somehow took his term and compared it to min-maxing in a non-synonymous sense but didn't really explain how you were changing the use of the term from the post you were replying to to your own.. To oppose his 'loaded dice' would be to oppose all min-maxing, and the devs would need to reduce the mechlab to a deck-chair rearranging interface.

And you STILL didn't elaborate on what the term means after your apology, you only used it in a slightly different way.

Edited by Motionless, 20 April 2012 - 09:19 AM.

[Lomack]

Some level of min/maxing needs to be present.

I would really rather not take a slow mech loaded with balistic weaponry down to a plannet with high gravity filled with ice.

I do see your point. I am not really in favor of being able to armor each arm separately. But, maybe thats my OCD requiring everything to be balanced as much as possible. I could easily justify the need for balance in mech designing. A mech that has 10 tons more weight on the left vs the right might fall over a lot easier, or constantly drift to the left.

However, I think min maxing can have its negatives as well. Per your point that people could reduce one arm to zero armor to bulk up everywhere else would leave them vulnerable to shots in that side. If I can blow your left arm off in one shot and then have shots to the inside of your torso by way of the now non existant sholder joint so much the better for me. Losing an appendage should be bad reguardless of how many critical systems were in that location.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Min-maxing? I always maximize my armor and minimize my engine first....then tweak my mech around that, sometimes I drop off a few points of armor if i feel I need more speed but generally, i have maxed out armor...then i toss in a few weapons and call it good...I hate not having armor, armor = survivability...sorta...of course, killing the enemy before he chews through the armor is good to lol. But Glass Cannons, I find to be unbelievably unappealing to drive.

[Evex]

It's okay nick every one goes on a bit of a nerd rant sometimes.

What people don't realize is that people have a specific style to how they play the game. In Mechwarrior online this style is represented through the battlemech a person uses in game. Eventually people will show up who just want to play the game, and will settle for pre built battlemechs, or battlemechs that are proven to work consistently. This for the most part is how a metagame is built, as the player base settles into the mindset of this is good and this sucks mentality. Most people don't realize is that mechwarrior online is sort of going to be built with min/maxing in mind. Anyone who's payed attention knows I've been tinkering with the matapult for a few days now, and I've been working on my own personal battlemech for a few days, as well. In that time I've learned a bit about the way battlemechs are built in mechwarrrior/battletech.

Everything has a cost to when its placed inside a battlemech, whether this is criticals or more weight. For instance a compact fusion engine, and compact gyro free up criticals in the center torso, but are heavier in weight. On the other hand a light fusion engine and extra light gyros have less weight, but take up more criticals. That's just the way the game works, and is a type of min/maxing. more tonnage for equipment/weapons for less criticals, or more criticals for lower tonnage weapons/equipment for more weight. I'm sure you get what I'm trying to say there. In order to modify a battlemech that decision needs to be made, so when modifing a battlemech min/maxing is all ready involved. Another form of min/maxing is do I replace this AC/5 with an AC/20 and have less ammo, or do I keep the AC/5 and get more ammo.

To be simple min/max in mechwarrior:online essentially ends with a designer modifing a design to there play style. This is achieved when the desire mech has been modified using its full weight in the most efficient way. If this can't be achieved with the chosen battlemech, or it variants, then you find a battlemech or variant that can be modified to your play style.

[Tyzh]

Motionless, on 20 April 2012 - 09:17 AM, said:

To oppose his 'loaded dice' would be to oppose all min-maxing, and the devs would need to reduce the mechlab to a deck-chair rearranging interface.

And you STILL didn't elaborate on what the term means after your apology, you only used it in a slightly different way.

Not at all. Loading dice is a form of cheating. Min/maxing isn't cheating. If there is anyway to min/max that amounts to cheating, then the spreadsheet wizards at the dev studio have failed -- the game is broken. (Imbalanced. Jacked. Dominated by a minority of successful strategies or builds.)

Thankfully, the guys at Piranha seem to be on top of things, I'm pretty confident this game will be fantastic.

[Pvt Dancer]

To be honest... I think it will be damn hard to min-max the basic mechs, with the currently in place rules, including the hard point rules to limit weapon load-outs. Battletech is actually fairly balanced if everyone uses the same tech level. The tech levels abuses are not player faults, that was the developer's faults.

The real thing to 'min-max' is going to be your build with the moduals (when they are all revieled). As Lorddeathstrike keeps going on about his sniper Atlas, he has a point. His build wouldn't be nearly as effective if it wasn't for the 7x zoom Scout modual he wants to use with all long range weapons. It probably will be an effective build if Assault mechs can use Scout Moduals and you can pick your mech for the map your playing... so he doesn't play this in a city map. But if the Devs feel Scout Moduals shouldn't go on Assault mechs and all you know is the planet your fighting on, and not the map... it suddenily is less useful for it's intended role.... it is no longer 'min-maxed'.

You can only 'min-max' to the extent what the Devs will let you 'min-max'.

[Barbaric Soul]

Garth Erlam, on 20 April 2012 - 08:03 AM, said:

I will probably spend more time in the final MechLab than i do actually playing, so I hope for a lot of 'min-maxing' - that said, a bad pilot is a bad pilot; it'll never come down to 'who had 2 extra armour points in their left torso instead of their right arm' - at least not from what I've seem

People, a Dev has spoke. There WILL BE min/maxing in MWO. Go find some other insignificant issue (to disagree with)

Edited by Mason Grimm, 20 April 2012 - 09:53 AM.

[Barbaric Soul]

dang Mason, that was pretty quick. Good work.

[ice trey]

It happens in most multiplayer games. Players will look for the best possible combination in order to get the upper hand on other players. It's inevitable when the only objective is "Kill everyone"

But the onus of handling the problem isn't sitting on the players' shoulders, but the staff of MWO. They're already doing good things to help to remedy the issues, like limiting customization and available technologies. It's their responsibility to make sure that what they add to the game is balanced, and that everything is a cost/benefit balance.

MW4 toyed with the tabletop balance too much and ended up with a real mess. Anything that wasn't a slow-recharge, hard-hitting weapon was essentially useless, because players began jump-sniping from behind hills and buildings. Coolant flushes that refilled every time the 'mech respawned made autocannons useless. Gauss Rifles lost their Capacitor-explosions and thereby their main drawback. Suddenly, MW4 was some sort of sniper game, with players at opposite sides of the map finding hills and only popping out to alpha strike and mash the coolant flush button. The problem is that it was a brutally effective tactic, but Microsoft didn't put that sort of thing into consideration, initially focusing on single player.

Granted... I really enjoy the single player of MW4. Canny acting aside, finally having a lance that you start to be able to connect with and expand on their characters was great - in no small part why I would have preferred to see the single player game that was initially announced in 2009. It was the desire to play a game with well-thought-out missions and interesting Mechwarriors piloting their beasts of burden that got me into the tabletop in the first place. Well, that and the Blackout of 2003.

Back on topic though, TPTB will be responsible for keeping the game balanced. I think the tabletop game is the best basis to work from, since the whole thing is meant to be a PVP game in the first place. Granted, there are a few things that just simply won't work with a real-time game that isn't based on random-rolls, but working with the probabilities you see in the tabletop will help to maintain the balance one would expect from this title. There are a lot of people on these boards that take the "Some of the tabletop rules won't work" to mean "Toss them all because this is a computer game and NOT FOR P&P NUUUURDS* LIKE THEM", but you can often tell it's an uninformed decision - how can you say the rules are bad starting point to build from when you don't know any of them in the first place? If any one kind of 'mech absolutely takes over the game, then they'll have to tweak how the gear works to restore balance to the mechanic.

That's the key thing that many past 'mechwarrior games made for single player lacked - game balance. They were structured to make Assault 'mechs the be-all-end-all; something to aspire to piloting as you made your way through the game. Since this title has no single player component, it's important that they do away with that mentality (Which they claim to be doing). Likewise, weapons should be balanced. Heat was a big game balancer, so doing away with coolant flushing with help us get back on track.

Again, Min-maxers are inevitable, but if The People that Be can keep the game balanced and limit game exploits, then we should see a more varied, interesting game.


*Kettles and pots

Edited by ice trey, 20 April 2012 - 10:15 AM.

[UncleKulikov]

Yeach, on 19 April 2012 - 05:34 PM, said:

From wikipedia

Min-maxing is the practice of playing a role-playing game, wargame or video game with the intent of creating the "best" character by means of minimizing undesired or unimportant traits and maximizing desired ones. This is usually accomplished by improving one specific trait or ability by sacrificing ability in all other fields.

Starting this topic for a discussion of min-maxing as it relates to MWO.
Specifically what should be allowed to be min-max
ie Armor, Weapons/loadout, Engine.

I'll start off with what I percieve as min-maxing that IMO should be taken out of MWO that was allowed in previous mechwarrior games.
"armor points could be adjusted so one arm could have less armor points than the other arm"

This allowed micro-management of min/maxing that could protect a percieved strong right arm (with max right arm armor) and reduce the armor to (or almost) zero for the "useless/ cannon fodder" left arm.

IMO when doing armor allocation, you should not be allowed this and should have "balance" armor loadout.

If armor allocation is the only way you see min maxing happening, there is no issue.

IF there is still damage transfer (I remember reading something about it; not sure where)

If I make one of my arms weaker than the other, and it has fewer weapons, then as soon as that arm is sheared off (which it will due to less armor) then my torso is really exposed, which makes a shortcut to gutting the mech. That isn't a good way to min max.

[MrForz]

I seriously doubt min maxing will be a problem in a Mechwarrior game, it's made for it. And with enough equipment, there will be several, if not alot of ways to get the best results, which is the best thing that can ever happen.

[Tronchaser]

ice trey, on 20 April 2012 - 10:09 AM, said:

It happens in most multiplayer games. Players will look for the best possible combination in order to get the upper hand on other players. It's inevitable when the only objective is "Kill everyone"

But the onus of handling the problem isn't sitting on the players' shoulders, but the staff of MWO. They're already doing good things to help to remedy the issues, like limiting customization and available technologies. It's their responsibility to make sure that what they add to the game is balanced, and that everything is a cost/benefit balance.

MW4 toyed with the tabletop balance too much and ended up with a real mess. Anything that wasn't a slow-recharge, hard-hitting weapon was essentially useless, because players began jump-sniping from behind hills and buildings. Coolant flushes that refilled every time the 'mech respawned made autocannons useless. Gauss Rifles lost their Capacitor-explosions and thereby their main drawback. Suddenly, MW4 was some sort of sniper game, with players at opposite sides of the map finding hills and only popping out to alpha strike and mash the coolant flush button. The problem is that it was a brutally effective tactic, but Microsoft didn't put that sort of thing into consideration, initially focusing on single player.

Granted... I really enjoy the single player of MW4. Canny acting aside, finally having a lance that you start to be able to connect with and expand on their characters was great - in no small part why I would have preferred to see the single player game that was initially announced in 2009. It was the desire to play a game with well-thought-out missions and interesting Mechwarriors piloting their beasts of burden that got me into the tabletop in the first place. Well, that and the Blackout of 2003.

Back on topic though, TPTB will be responsible for keeping the game balanced. I think the tabletop game is the best basis to work from, since the whole thing is meant to be a PVP game in the first place. Granted, there are a few things that just simply won't work with a real-time game that isn't based on random-rolls, but working with the probabilities you see in the tabletop will help to maintain the balance one would expect from this title. There are a lot of people on these boards that take the "Some of the tabletop rules won't work" to mean "Toss them all because this is a computer game and NOT FOR P&P NUUUURDS* LIKE THEM", but you can often tell it's an uninformed decision - how can you say the rules are bad starting point to build from when you don't know any of them in the first place? If any one kind of 'mech absolutely takes over the game, then they'll have to tweak how the gear works to restore balance to the mechanic.

That's the key thing that many past 'mechwarrior games made for single player lacked - game balance. They were structured to make Assault 'mechs the be-all-end-all; something to aspire to piloting as you made your way through the game. Since this title has no single player component, it's important that they do away with that mentality (Which they claim to be doing). Likewise, weapons should be balanced. Heat was a big game balancer, so doing away with coolant flushing with help us get back on track.

Again, Min-maxers are inevitable, but if The People that Be can keep the game balanced and limit game exploits, then we should see a more varied, interesting game.


*Kettles and pots

I could not have said it any better myself. Bravo!

[verybad]

MinMaxing will happen, to whatever degree is possible in the game. This is the way the world works. It's ridiculous to say that it shouldn't be allowed. The hardpoint and variants systems should keep mechs to their basic character and reduce the amount of boating, so there should be LESS minmaxing involved.

You're never going to remove the desire of people to improve their position through things like minmaxing their ride however, it's built into human nature. It's what made people decide to use sticks instead of bare hands, then to put sharpened stones on those sticks, then to make bows, then guns...then mechs.

For people expecting a novel like experience, wake up, novels only work well for the protagonist.

MinMaxing to whatever degree is possible is going to happen. Don't lose sleep over it. The hardpoint system should make even minmaxed mechs not too overbearingly powerful (though probably better)

[Victor Morson]

The only form of minmaxing that I ever felt damaged any MechWarrior game was in MW4 when people discovered that they could reduce and almost eliminate their side torso armor (amongst other things such as rear armor and leg armor) for the sole purpose of boosting their engines to insane levels. Within a month the game went from the strategic stand off fights with fast moves into Quake like brawls that dominated the game to the start of the Hardcore era and was one of the major factors that got me burnt out on MW4 before it's time. Don't get me wrong, I didn't think it was unfair or unbalanced, but the game's pace went from strategic to frenzy because of it - it felt like another game from that point onward. (Major props to any House Jurai player that happens to read this - you guys figured this out months in advance and were a terror because of it. In fact I think my house adopted the idea from you and then it spread to others.)

That said, I'm not worried about it at all in MWO. There's a lot of reasons for it, but most importantly the concept of criticals being back. Not armoring areas of your body won't result in a clunky damage transfer system like MW4 but a huge risk of losing serious equipment or even becoming entirely disabled if you're sporting an XL engine which, really, is needed if you want to get any speed with your guns.

Simply put, high firepower fast moving brawlers will be a niche in MWO but I simply cannot see the dominance of it with the systems outlined so far. If someone tries to recreate the concept behind the brawling-Bushwacker odds are they're going to have an ammo explosion and light up before they ever even get into gun range. My major hope is that brawlers will have to move up with fire support and terrain again - flank and maneuver, rather than just blitzing straight up the center to their targets. They simply won't be able to have the firepower/speed needed to avoid doing this if they have to worry about their armor.

Anyway that has been my only problem with minmaxing in MechWarrior, ever. I have never had a problem with people modifying their 'mechs within the rules, and in fact think it's horribly unwise not to. I know there's a hardcore group out there that refuse to adopt to concepts like "Matching weapon sets" and want to run a mis-matched array of weapons and insist they work well, but personally I plan on trying to match my weapons firing characteristics as much as possible as I have in every past MW game.

Edited by Victor Morson, 20 April 2012 - 11:40 AM.

[MonkeyDCecil]

I don't for see Min/Maxing as a problem for MWO. I also see nothing wrong with, make the armor on any part of a mech almost nothing. If you want to lose it quickly that is your business. Whom am I to tell you how to build your mech.

[infinite xaer0]

there's a very simple way to prevent ppl from stripping out armor on arms that don't have any weapons, and that's to make those arms useful for other things, such as picking up objects (relevant to the victory conditions of a game type), or melee combat, or something else even. Other than that, min/maxing armor or engine size was NEVER a problem in previous MW games; weapon boats were always the persistent issue. However, now that you can't boat in this game, there's going to be much less of a problem with ppl min/maxing damage output.. that, and whatever slight armor boost players do get from redistributing it asymmetrically, is going to offer such little advantage that it's probably not even going to be noticeable in-game.