214 replies to this topic

[Imagine Dragons]

Tolkien, on 30 November 2012 - 09:49 AM, said:

I agree with what you said about hard versus soft currencies being the difference between pay to win and not, but I disagree that cbills are a proper soft currency.

The reason is that in LOL you can't do anything except play games to earn the soft currency (IP), while in MWO you can buy MC, buy a mech with MC, then sell it for Cbills, thereby linking Cbills to dollars

If they removed that ability to sell mechs/parts then it would calm me down some.

P.S. While I disagree with what you said, I love your banner! Atlai stevensen - your ambassador for the future missile crisis!

While I agree thats a flaw, it doesn't brick wall non-paying players. Yes it would take non-paying players longer/more effort to enable the C-Bill upkeep, but its ultimately still being payed in soft-currency and thus no "gold wall" stopping players.

Besides, its very costly to keep buying mechs with MC just to sell them for C-Bills. Otherwise you could start agrueing that Boosts are P2W...

But I feel overall the issue is mute.

[Buckminster]

There's also the point at which mechs 'require' premium time to run. If you have to spend the money to get premium time, then it's borderline P2W.

The reason I say borderline is because you don't *need* premium time, it just minimizes the time you'd spend in scrub matches farming c-bills.

[BigMooingCow]

Buckminster, on 30 November 2012 - 09:16 AM, said:

You left a couple points out of your example though. AMS reduces the impact of missiles (won't stop 8 LRM20s, but will reduce LRM10s and LRM5s), that lance of Awesomes should get two or three volleys off before the LRMs hit their target, PPC shots don't have an "INCOMING PPC" warning, and you can aim a PPC and fire it by eye.

Now I will say that I agree that PPCs (and energy weapons as a whole) are hurt by the current heat system. I've been running a dual PPC K2 and a dual ALRM15 C1, and my C1 is hands down more effective. It is not, however, a killing machine. It is also worth mentioning that my C1 is decked out with tech - ES, DHS, and Artemis, where my K2 only has ES on it.

All good points. Let me counter:

* AMS helps, but you'd need massed targets to affect a large salvo of LRMs. In my experience (which is admittedly less than many of you here) AMS is great against 5-20 missiles, but when 40+ are bearing down on you at once it's of marginal use.

* The speed of PPC's relative to missiles is an advantage, and the missile warning is handy, but if you look at it from the other perspective, a mech caught out in the open (whoops!) that gets nailed by a PPC probably saw it coming, and will starting moving laterally to make it harder to hit. A light mech at range is VERY difficult to hit with PPCs. With LRMs, you could have 80 missiles in the air from one mech before the first one even hits. And in the next few seconds the target will be continuously hammered with no relief.

* The "INCOMING MISSILES" warning is of marginal usefulness because you don't know if there are five missiles in the air or one hundred.

Anyway, I think PPC's are implemented fairly well, they're just under-powered at the moment. I think we'd be well-served if PGI started tweaking the heat, damage, and recycle values for all the large energy weapons. Just make minor tweaks every patch... drop heat 5% next patch and see how builds change. If LRMs still rule the battlefield, drop it another 5%. Once we see maybe a third of the fire support mechs sporting energy weapons and some brawlers carrying twin LPL's, we're in a much better place than today.

I feel that every patch that goes by that PGI doesn't touch large energy weapons is wasted time. They have to stop tweaking one thing at a time. It's better to do so of course, but they have a lot of work to do and a small window of public interest to complete it in. If CW launches and weapon balance isn't fixed they'll lose the attention of many new players.

I guess I feel urgency on weapon balance, because I don't want to see MWO fail due to a drawn out development cycle. It's SO easy to tweak heat tables, I wish they'd just TRY.

[Tolkien]

Buckminster, on 30 November 2012 - 09:58 AM, said:

There's also the point at which mechs 'require' premium time to run. If you have to spend the money to get premium time, then it's borderline P2W.

The reason I say borderline is because you don't *need* premium time, it just minimizes the time you'd spend in scrub matches farming c-bills.

Also, if I can earn more cbills by taking a cheap mech (e.g. commando with no expensive equipment) even if it's not best for the team, we have the problem of misaligned motivations between the individual and the team. Walk through this thought experiment with me> If they manage to balance matchmaking so a challenging match is always found you will have a 50/50 win/loss ratio. In that case you know that for any given match you have equal odds of winning and losing.

If you win, you keep the win bonus, and pay for your repairs (might be very cheap).

If you lose, you pay for your repairs (field a 'good'/upgraded mech and this will be killer expensive).

So you end up in a situation where the extra win amount which is the same for a good/upgraded or bad/cheap maintenance mech, but the loss risk amount is much higher on the upgraded mech.

In that situation the *rational* choice based on the numbers is to field the lowest cost mech you can. It's called a tragedy of the commons and is the consequence of having individual goals better served by ignoring common goals.

[Imagine Dragons]

This probably devolves into the endless "economy" issue.

Personally I think its largely mitigated by the whole "You don't drop an armored colum of Abrams on a small village revolt" economics

The expectation that you need to field the most powerful equipment fittings for every random battle or low intensive conflict is annoying, and would be solved if the MM for the Random Battle Queue took into account the mech's value. So your bargin bin farming mech would mostly be matched with other bargin bin farming mechs. So relatively you don't need to feel bad for bringing a weaker but more cost effective mech.

[Buckminster]

A lot of issues are matchmaker related.

The fact that a bone stock (or trial) Commando drops with the same weight as a fully loaded and upgraded Jenner means that one side is going to be at a disadvantage. Even among mechs of the same weight, upgrades and such make a huge difference - my C1 with Artemis, DHS and ES will have more of an impact on the field than a fresh off the factory floor C1.

[MustrumRidcully]

XenomorphZZ, on 30 November 2012 - 09:57 AM, said:

While I agree thats a flaw, it doesn't brick wall non-paying players. Yes it would take non-paying players longer/more effort to enable the C-Bill upkeep, but its ultimately still being payed in soft-currency and thus no "gold wall" stopping players.

Besides, its very costly to keep buying mechs with MC just to sell them for C-Bills. Otherwise you could start agrueing that Boosts are P2W...

But I feel overall the issue is mute.

Actually, with the repair fees, I think there is a risk of a gold wall forming up. If it isn't economical viable to run an "expensive" mech without a 25 to 30 % founder/hero mech bonus or a 50 % premium bonus, then F2P will be disadvantaged. They will be forced to run weaker mechs to cover the repair cost of the heavier mech, and without somethnig like a battle value system (and one that actually accurately models a mech's power, and is not some number with no basis in game play reality), they will be at disadvantage. That's why I think it is so important to change the economy and balance so that the economical viability of a mech is independent of its power level, and idelly, all tech "advances" represent side-grades. Things like the Clan ER PPC being lighter and smaller and dealing more damage per shot with a longer than then the IS ER PPC, but with a notably lower rate of fire so that the end result is that the IS ER PPC will deliver the same (or a bit more, to compensate the range advantage) than the Clan ER PPC.

[Malzel]

We're still talking about paying for perks like it's a bad thing, or implying that only the people who drop cash on the game can pilot the "good stuff," which just isn't true. Like I said earlier, a free player can accomplish everything that a paying player can, including running that super Artemis-equipped LRM boat. It can't be a matter of "pay to win," because that free player can "win" just as hard as the paying player. The free player just might not be able to afford it every single match, which is fine.

The high cost of running LRMs like people want to (2000+ on a mech) is part of the balance. Someone said that the "economy" shouldn't be a balancing factor, which is nonsensical. The sole reason for the game's economy is a balancing factor, to ensure that you have to work for the powerful stuff, and to make sure that the "low power" techs still have a niche: they're cheap to repair and operate and thus earn you more money. I'm a free player, myself, and I basically keep 2 of every mech class, one is high-powered and souped up that I play when the match is important or I want to go all-out, and one is more economical with cheaper tech and weapons that allows me to make money when the match isn't important and I'm just messing around. That lets me play with my high-power stuff, just not all the time. I agree with Xenomorph about running your "best" mech every single game and the non-existence of the "gold wall". Having to "live within your means" is not a flaw in the game, it's a feature.

Tolkien, I understand and empathize with your frame rate issue; MWO is a pretty demanding game and not everyone has a top-notch computer to handle it flawlessly. Please understand that I mean no offense, though, when I say that's kind of an issue with your individual circumstances, not the game. This game is about role warfare, yes, but raining death from relative safety as an LRM boat is a very powerful and coveted role, and that power is a privilege, not a right. There are many roles that can help the team, even as a cheap, expendable light. Expecting to be able to run one of the more powerful builds every match because it's the only thing your computer can handle or only thing you like doing is basically saying, "Buff this, because it's all I play," and ignoring bigger picture of game balance.

Besides, every LRM boat in existence can just abuse the 75% free ammo right now. If you have 1500+ missiles on your mech, that's still 1000+ missiles per game without ever paying a dime, so it's completely viable to run an LRM boat every single game without founders' or premium boosts, already. I feel like some people arguing against the re-arming costs just want to keep their cake and eat it, too. I'm sorry if that offends anyone.

Edited by Malzel, 30 November 2012 - 01:57 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Quote

The high cost of running LRMs like people want to (2000+ on a mech) is part of the balance. Someone said that the "economy" shouldn't be a balancing factor, which is nonsensical. The sole reason for the game's economy is a balancing factor, to ensure that you have to work for the powerful stuff, and to make sure that the "low power" techs still have a niche: they're cheap to repair and operate and thus earn you more money

And I happen to say if that's the sole reason to have an economy, it's a bad reason. I happen to believe that economical systems in games are about advancement, so that you don't start out with the best uber gear, but slowly get there. But once you get there, you'll stay with it, you don't go back because they are too costly. Every match I would have to go back to older gear I'd feel regret about even wasting money on the good gear, or regret about not being able to actually use the mech I envisioned for myself and worked to build.
But this is only tangentially relevant to balance issues, I'd leave it for one of the other million threads on the brokeness or greatness of PGI's economical system.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 30 November 2012 - 02:09 PM.

[Malzel]

Following that line of thought, then, the re-arming and repair costs should be removed, entirely. Do you agree?

[Kaulwyn51]

Balancing weapons power and damage is not what I am now going to mention. Balancing boats and over powered mech by way of using multiples of a single weapon type can be done by viewing weapon critical slots. We have beam, partical, balistic and missle, The one thing they do have in common is physical area mass with in thier own type shown by crit slots. If the DEVs used a simple table I think it would be a good start. Lights equip only 1 crit slot weapons, Med 1 and 2 crit slot, Heavy / Assult 3 crit slots and up. This could be adjusted by each weapon type. I KNOW the TT had no rule for this, but this game is, as we have seen, very flexable. The Lasers, Pulse Lasers, ACs, Missiles, and PPCs could all be put into tables that would allow for restrictions because of critcal slots allowed for that size of mech. I just don't physically see how a gauss or AC 20 should fit on the chasis of a light or 2 LRM 15 carried on a med. YES a weapon can fit on a mech now really only restricted by its weight, but physical area mass of the item could help also in keeping a balance in the game.
Oh and one last thought, if a mech also had a restriction on the amount over, 2 or 3 of a single type of weapons with a penalty, say double heat for each type of weapon over.
example: weapon A creates 2 heat, 3x (weaponA) = 6 heat, add one more weapon A(4th) and it = 12 heat and a 5th weapon A = 24 heat. I hope that makes some sense. each weapon over the heat critical max doubles heat per weapon.
This would not stop someone from putting 7 lasers on a mech or 6 streaks, but it would make them think about it and it would also I think help the DEVs to not have to play with the balistics of the weapon systems so much.
This is just a ruff idea, but I think the simple answer sometimes can be the right one.

[Varaxus]

I do believe that repair and rearm costs could be removed. Just simply give the other team more salvage money for killing your uber death machine. It would also let them lower the amount of cbills given out per match and still keep the balance of having to play x matches in order to buy y mech/equipment

[Malzel]

But putting 9 lasers on the Hunchback 4P is the whole point. My buddy's Laser Floyd Hunchie would be ruined.

[Varaxus]

Also by doing this you get rid of the thought, as stated above, that I shoul drun my less expensive mech to repair instead of my mech that I am good at at and want to play. Its a game not the real world

[Stingz]

Kaulwyn51, on 30 November 2012 - 02:19 PM, said:

Balancing weapons power and damage is not what I am now going to mention. Balancing boats and over powered mech by way of using multiples of a single weapon type can be done by viewing weapon critical slots. We have beam, partical, balistic and missle, The one thing they do have in common is physical area mass with in thier own type shown by crit slots. If the DEVs used a simple table I think it would be a good start. Lights equip only 1 crit slot weapons, Med 1 and 2 crit slot, Heavy / Assult 3 crit slots and up. This could be adjusted by each weapon type. I KNOW the TT had no rule for this, but this game is, as we have seen, very flexable.

Crit slot weapon restrictions won't work at all, ever. Hunchback (AC/20), Commando (SRM-6), and many other stock configs would break. Breaking stock configs means not happening.

You better run for the hills when the Clans come rolling in with Omni-Mechs, they can stuff anything that fits onto those omni-slots. No rules, only tonnage and crit slots restrict what fits. Hell they even have a cannon dual-gauss heavy, Mad Dog Alt.C

Edited by Stingz, 30 November 2012 - 02:33 PM.

[Varaxus]

My issue with weapon balance is you have Large Laser and PPC's that rarely see play. Why? Because the amount of heat they produce. Large Lasers not so much but the PPC needs to be reworked from the ground up. It does 1 more pt of damage over a LL and is 2 more tons, 1 more crit slot, and produces a crap ton more heat. WHY????? LRMS seem fine now and with ECM coming out the SSRM and LRM boats will have their ***** handed to them by coordinated teams fielding it. The PPC should be a weapon feared in the field as the AC20 is. It has long range and ""should" hit almost instantly but unfortunately in this game it moves slower than a gauss shot.

[MustrumRidcully]

Malzel, on 30 November 2012 - 02:14 PM, said:

Following that line of thought, then, the re-arming and repair costs should be removed, entirely. Do you agree?

I wouldn't miss it a bit. LRMs need to be balanced on the battlefield, not by my bank. But I was also never a fan of death penalties in any game (but those are a bit of a special case, because here you can rightfully say -I already lost and am lying on the ground, why do you keep kicking me?)

I think the only important thing of an economical model is to ensure that good play gives good rewards and bad play doesn't. If you need repair bills to account for that, okay, fine. But if you can do it in another way, also fine. I want every game mechanic to enforce good and smart play, and not have smart play (e.g. optimize your earning) be in the way of good play (e.g. optimizing your chance to win by using clever tactics, taking calculated risks to increase your win chance, sacrificing yourself for the team and all that.). Because otherwise, you'll create a conflict between players.

But damn, this isn't the topic for this. Let's get back to weapon balancing.

There is a recent dev post that suggests they are thinking about lowering the (ER) Large Laser beam duration and lowering the PPC heat and increasing its projectile speed. That sounds like a good move.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 30 November 2012 - 02:37 PM.

[Stingz]

Varaxus, on 30 November 2012 - 02:31 PM, said:

My issue with weapon balance is you have Large Laser and PPC's that rarely see play. Why? Because the amount of heat they produce. Large Lasers not so much but the PPC needs to be reworked from the ground up.

Boost velocity up-to or well-past gauss rifle shots, and lower the heat(Epecially the ERPPC). Seriously, without true DHS there is little reason to run such a hot weapon with a minimum range.

[ExAstris]

Malzel, on 30 November 2012 - 01:54 PM, said:

I feel like some people arguing against the re-arming costs just want to keep their cake and eat it, too. I'm sorry if that offends anyone.

You feel incorrectly. This is because you are misappropriating our arguments to the wrong agenda.

The economy punishes higher tech.

The economy punishes ammo users.

The economy nullifies the c-bill gains of ALRMs.

These are three entirely seperate topics, you keep responding to everyone as though everyone is arguing against the first. We're not. (I personally think its a bad idea to have more than an smidge of for the same reasons MistrumRidcully noted, but I haven't mentioned that topic once in this thread) We're arguing against the bottom two, and in particular, the final one. If you want to punish high tech that gives great performance, then thats a whole different crusade.

If you really want that end goal then you should be appalled by the nearly non-existent bump in repair costs from using DHS compared to them providing a straight 40% boost in firepower for minimal drawbacks (except on assaults). Thats enormous battlefield performance for a huge slew of mechs at absolutely no economic penalty other than the overhead for initial install. Personally, I think all the upgrades should work that way, but again, that is a completely different horse to beat and has nothing to do with mech or weapon balance.


What does have to do with mech balance is that roles are being unfairly punished economically. Specifically, the LRM support and SRM brawler roles have an economic penalty that is far more extreme than it is on other mechs (ballistic brawlers) and non-existent on several more (any of the half-dozen laser boats). This punishment isn't tied to tech either. Even normal SRM ammo costs more to reload (54k for one of my mechs) than repairing the entire machine that carries them (30k).

This is why there are so many suggestions to fix ammo prices. They are broken. It has nothing to do with profitability while using a particular tech level. If that were the issue, we'd also want dual gauss mechs to never be profitable, and xl engines to break your bank every time they break. Whether you want that or not (I sure don't) is entirely tangential to the problem we're describing.




And with that said, we should probably get back to more direct weapon and mech balance concerns.

Reducing the heat on the ERLL and ERPPC is a necessary move. The regular PPC... its really not too bad right now, the thing that will prevent it from widespread use is the minimum range. Granted, lowering its heat more will make it more desirable, so it might start getting used more when its heat efficiency and damage placement eclipses the laser selection, but the cost is that it won't much feel like the old heat-spiking-lightning-ball we all love. But if thats they only way the want to balance the PPC instead of keeping their arbitrary minimum range a no-damage zone, then I suppose its at least a step in the right direction.

[Tolkien]

Malzel, on 30 November 2012 - 01:54 PM, said:

We're still talking about paying for perks like it's a bad thing, or implying that only the people who drop cash on the game can pilot the "good stuff," which just isn't true. Like I said earlier, a free player can accomplish everything that a paying player can, including running that super Artemis-equipped LRM boat. It can't be a matter of "pay to win," because that free player can "win" just as hard as the paying player. The free player just might not be able to afford it every single match, which is fine.

The high cost of running LRMs like people want to (2000+ on a mech) is part of the balance. Someone said that the "economy" shouldn't be a balancing factor, which is nonsensical. The sole reason for the game's economy is a balancing factor, to ensure that you have to work for the powerful stuff, and to make sure that the "low power" techs still have a niche: they're cheap to repair and operate and thus earn you more money. I'm a free player, myself, and I basically keep 2 of every mech class, one is high-powered and souped up that I play when the match is important or I want to go all-out, and one is more economical with cheaper tech and weapons that allows me to make money when the match isn't important and I'm just messing around. That lets me play with my high-power stuff, just not all the time. I agree with Xenomorph about running your "best" mech every single game and the non-existence of the "gold wall". Having to "live within your means" is not a flaw in the game, it's a feature.

Tolkien, I understand and empathize with your frame rate issue; MWO is a pretty demanding game and not everyone has a top-notch computer to handle it flawlessly. Please understand that I mean no offense, though, when I say that's kind of an issue with your individual circumstances, not the game. This game is about role warfare, yes, but raining death from relative safety as an LRM boat is a very powerful and coveted role, and that power is a privilege, not a right. There are many roles that can help the team, even as a cheap, expendable light. Expecting to be able to run one of the more powerful builds every match because it's the only thing your computer can handle or only thing you like doing is basically saying, "Buff this, because it's all I play," and ignoring bigger picture of game balance.

Besides, every LRM boat in existence can just abuse the 75% free ammo right now. If you have 1500+ missiles on your mech, that's still 1000+ missiles per game without ever paying a dime, so it's completely viable to run an LRM boat every single game without founders' or premium boosts, already. I feel like some people arguing against the re-arming costs just want to keep their cake and eat it, too. I'm sorry if that offends anyone.

I think you misinterpreted the argument, and ended up making my own point for me.

My point was that we should not be able to buy battlefield effectiveness.

By stating that a free player can still field the same equipment, just not as often you are making the point that free players will be running weaker on average than pay to winners.

QED.

MustrumRidcully, on 30 November 2012 - 02:36 PM, said:

...

But damn, this isn't the topic for this. Let's get back to weapon balancing.

There is a recent dev post that suggests they are thinking about lowering the (ER) Large Laser beam duration and lowering the PPC heat and increasing its projectile speed. That sounds like a good move.

As you correctly pointed out, since the devs are trying to use Cbill economics to balance battlefield performance, this means that discussions of economics of repair and rearm and maintenance of weapons systems is indeed a question of balance.

I think we both agree these should be separate issues, so hopefully the devs will see it this way too.


The bottom line for me is that the way things are now, I can buy an average battlefield advantage over a free player by spending dollars. As someone pointed out this gap will likely get a lot bigger when clan tech shows up, so it really should be dealt with before it becomes a big problem.

If it is not, the game will seem sleazy to me for allowing pay to win, compared to League of legends where you can get your champions and runes faster with boosts but a skilled free player once he has earned those same runes and champions will still beat you if he is the better player - there is no battlefield advantage to having spent the money in that game, which is the way it should be. Money should only get you cosmetic upgrades like cammo and paint schemes, as well as boosts for faster progress, not ever for battlefield effectiveness.

Edited by Tolkien, 01 December 2012 - 04:31 AM.