6 replies to this topic

[ice trey]

Hey Guys.

As a tabletop player and a long time reader of the fluff, one thing about the Battletech universe that hasn't been translated well here is that - while there are a vast number of 'mechs out there, the few that are customized are either done out of desperation (We have no PPCs, let's put a Large Laser and a couple of heat sinks in there, instead), or because the mechwarrior therein was prolific enough that he could throw huge amounts of money or milk favors from powerful contacts to keep his mech in top shape. This was mostly because repairing and maintaining custom 'mechs was significantly more costly and difficult than having something straight off the assembly line, and required much more skilled technicians to pull off the operation without botching it.

However, while customizing 'mechs has an initially high cost in MWO, there really isn't any motivation for players to want to keep their 'mechs in the stock configuration. Why would you ever keep the vanilla AC5 in your Dragon when you could replace it with a gauss rifle or AC10 in there, instead? Or why not boat those SRMs in your Catapult to chew up most any target in a matter of seconds?

I'd like to suggest that a system be put into place that reduces the repair costs if a 'mech is kept in it's stock configuration, to maybe 75% the normal costs that we're seeing here. That, or boost things the other direction, making custom 'mechs more expensive, probably at about 125% the normal cost. That said though, it'd be nice if a system were put into place that measured how far the 'mech deviated from the original (Like the refit/Customization rules in Strategic Operations), so that players who did minor tweaks didn't get as badly hit for repair costs as, say, someone who strips out every last weapons system on their 'mech.

I've brought up the idea with several of the other players I've dealt with on Teamspeak, and overall, the reception has been positive.

tl;dr:

• In the books, it's very rare for a mech to be customized.
  
• In the tabletop game when using the campaign rules, customization is risky, expensive, and can make maintenance a nightmare.
  
• In MWO, the only reason most players would use a stock config mech is because they don't have enough C-bills left to customize it yet.
  
• Please add a out-of-game mechanic that promotes the use of stock configurations so that while players can still customize, they'd at least consider keeping their 'mechs as-is, or reduce how dramatic the customizations are.

Edited by ice trey, 28 December 2012 - 04:12 AM.

[ice trey]

I'm bumping this thread back up due to it falling into obscurity in a matter of seconds.

I didn't notice anything against doing so in the stickies so far, but I apologize if there is.

I'd just like to see some input from the forums.

[Icedpyre]

You know I'd never really thought of the customization from this point of view. Ignore the TT for a second; They aren't trying to sell TT, and they aren't trying to sell to TT players(specifically). I think it IS a shame that people customize every variant they purchase. I would like to see a mech, and know without looking at the targeting information, what kind of weapons he has. I.e. looking at that catapult and knowing he's packing twin lrm15s because of the boxes(instead of twin SSRM2 and 4 ppcs or some such monstrosity).

I think this is actually a fantastic idea. It's tough to implement especially with repair/rearm disabled at the moment. I think there's no reason why they can't leave the repair mechanic/cost in, with some tweaking. The addition of a repair bonus for using non-customized variants would provide mass incentive to want to use things like hero mechs as well, IMO.

[Roughneck45]

Mech customization is too fun/important to the game to penalize people for doing it, regardless of how it is in the lore.

Something for stock mechs may not be bad though. Maybe a c-bill bonus, or stock mech only matches.

[Zyllos]

Well, the problem with stock mechs is their current heat systems, RoF of weapons, and convergence makes them weak or unplayable.

- Heat should be introduced across the CD of the weapon, not during the firing of the weapon.
- Heat scale penalties should be introduced.
- RoF should be decreased by 100% (double CD).
- DHS needs to be the same across inside/outside engine heatsinks and only increase capacity by 1.0.
- A cone of fire needs to be introduced, which is a function of movement.

Because RoF is so high, wielding an array of smaller weapons, with convergence, is always better than wielding 1 or 2 big weapons. Once RoF is much slower, you will begin to see mechs wield larger weapons to get in damage faster, into single locations but there is a cap in how much you can wield smaller weapons to out DPS larger weapons because of slower RoF.

This also helps a lot in the heat department because you can fire at maximum RoF with 50% of the heat production than it is now, which is the ONLY way to fix stock mechs. The only other way is to increase SHS dissipation (which would be wrong) or decrease heat of weapons (which I would be fine with if they also decreased weapon damage, to match the 10s firing rates, IE. Medium Laser, 5 dmg, 4 heat, 3s CD -> 1.5 dmg, 1.2 heat, 3s CD)

Once you begin to have weapons producing less heat, thus stock mechs are viable, you would introduce heat scale penalties. Slower movement, slower torso/arm movement, and larger cone of fire. What this beings to do is that firing multiple weapons would begin to produce excess heat, slowly. Passing a certain threshold would make it where you would start to receive penalties, exactly like how the TT rules work.

[Rocket2Uranus]

stock configuration?
thats horrible. trial mechs are pure pile of $H*T. but having hopes of IGP the game closer to Table Top rules are not going to happen.

if TT rules were applied the game would lose TONS of fast pace action. It's already unbalanced and weird.
And every time they release a new mech it feels like previous available mechs were under powered. lots of people roll around with medium mechs. but i've been seeing increasing amounts of light mechs because of lag shield, stalkers for their hardpoints/weight. you wait and see, with more mech's intorduced, its going to be make every mechs before look underpowered. (this is how they make players pay for new mechs)

[Volume]

The game really just needs a "stock 'mechs only" mode. I'd play it often. It's cool to see 'Mechs with less customization, because it wouldn't really be feasible to perform on a regular basis, canonically...I also have a great feeling when I'm able to succeed with a terrible stock loadout (see: DRG-1N).

That said, your suggestion is not really the way to implement it I think.

Balance by cost does not work, due to the whole wallet warrior thing. Someone with a huge disposable income of real money could hypothetically just buy 'mechs and sell them for c-bills until he has a stack that allows him to customize things any way he wants to, and not worry about repair/rearm costs, because it's not about turning a profit for him. It's about having the best, all the time.

And even if it's not all the time - it would be often enough. In an online game, there are people who are either going to play the most profitable 'Mech, or the most experience-gaining 'Mech, or the most effective 'Mech, depending on what they want to maximize.

Now, if you add the 75% or 125% thing you were talking about, it might mean that people will stay in stock 'Mechs (ie; the ones with good default configurations at least) in order to "grind C-Bills" but it will have an adverse effect on actual gameplay if half your team is playing to win and the other half isn't. If one group of players can afford to run XL engines, Endo, DHS, and afford to optimize a 'Mech's weaponry for specific range and role) and another group can't, that's a severe disadvantage.

Even with proper matchmaking to say that there are, say, a limited and equal number of players with custom/optimized 'Mechs in a matchmaker-created scenario, it still rewards the player with the good 'Mech because he gets to stomp on people with bad gear. When one player is able to solo five 'Mechs on your team, they're not thinking "That's okay, his tricked out 'Mech is way better than mine, but at least it costs a lot to repair and maintain! Theoretically, this guy won't be able to do this in a sustainable fashion - he can only stomp stock-loadouts with his powerful 'Mech when he has the money for it, and it's unsustainable to run a loadout like that."

Reality is it would probably be sustainable, and even if it wasn't, there are people who would drop $200+ to be able to run their 6ERLL jump-sniping Novacat every match.

Now, if there was a battle-value based matchmaker, and it would factor in numbers (say, 3 customized 'Mechs totaling 8000BV vs 9 stock 'Mechs totaling 8000BV), this might work. Even then the "outnumbered" team isn't "outgunned" and they'd probably still feel good if they lost because of their E-Peen like "I still killed 2 of them!" and it pads their K/D ratio. It would certainly be more fair if players are prepared/ready to go for it, and it's much better than "8v8" and one team has 1 trial 'Mech while the other has 5.

The discrepancy of canon loadouts vs customized loadouts wouldn't even be so bad if the heat system, armor system, and fire rate system weren't so off-canon. But the bottom line is that it takes the already-bad stock loadouts and makes them nigh-useless due to overheating and having weaker (much weaker, comparatively) armor. That's on top of the fact that most stock loadouts are slower than customized 'Mechs (everyone loves their XL 300s it seems), have less effective firepower. Even if it miraculously has a strong alpha, it will have horrible heat issues making its effective DPS much lower than something properly customized (example: putting DHS on a PPC awesome, or removing one PPC to put on heatsinks instead).

The sad truth is that a customized 'Mech will always be a threat with higher potential, and a higher ceiling of strength. Many online game players gravitate to the best and only the best because they have no reason to intentionally gimp themselves. Once R&R is in the game it will just make it "unfun" for a lot of people because they can't play their favorite 'Mech that they've poured money into, and they'll probably go play a different F2P game that doesn't stunt your progress as you start being able to play what you want (for example, you don't earn less IP in League of Legends for having properly set-up runes/masteries or playing a "stronger" champion).

I personally would love a stock-loadout ONLY mode because the GAMEPLAY would be balanced, as EVERYONE has to have stock loadouts. Again people would just gravitate towards the better ones, but it would still be more skillful than a 36SRM DHS/ENDO/XL300 Catapult.