136 replies to this topic

[Snuglninja]

I think the reason it failed was a pug mentality of everything has to be fair. I thing 8 man teams that work together on a regular basis will enjoy the challenge of not knowing what they're dropping against. The simple solution to me is if you want to have balance keep dropping with 4 man teams or add matchmaking lobby where people can pick who they drop with. Once community warfare starts they will have the matchmaking balance system down. Until then I say we just enjoy the game the way it is and keep putting positive feedback on the forms.

[BFalcon]

Kerguidou, on 03 December 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

For one thing, canon doesn't matter when balancing a game. For another, I don't care about canon, and the silent majority doesn't either.

More to the point, I think it should be better to let players sort it out. World in conflict solved this issue ingeniously by allowing players to switch roles on the fly, for a cost. What you're proposing PGI does to MWO would be akin to Riot enforcing aggressively a 2-1-2 meta from the start and never allow anything to stray for it. However, by letting the player base experiment over a few years, a solid and versatile core strategy emerged. Unfortunately, for financial reasons, Riot have now crystallized the current metagame because it's easier to sell the image of teams and players in tournaments when you know what the role of a single player will be.

Anyways, all I'm saying is that we should let players sort it out.

Actually, you'd be surprised at how many of the BT hardcore DO care about Canon - or at least realism. PGI have done a good job in making the larger mechs worth less income than the smaller, which helps a lot (simply due to the repair bills).

If you don't care about Battletech... the question does occur to me - why do you play this game? Or would you be happy, for example, to see Cylons appear in a Star Trek game? I believe in sticking to the spirit of whichever game you play, otherwise you change it to some horrendous gruel of mismatched genre stereotypes. That's slightly off-topic though...

Good example though... it does show how PGI to need to be careful - just trust those who already went through this system once, though... it wasn't that much fun except for Atlas pilots.

[zenstrata]

So to start, I played back before there was a match-maker. I enjoyed playing like that. They mystery of having a completely unknown enemy force was fun! I would keep track of every reported/sighted mech on the battlefield and have a variable running tally of enemy force composition during the game in my mind. I Enjoyed this!

Running into teams of all compositions forced players to create different strategies on-the-fly. There was no one-size-fits-all team or setup because you could never predict exactly what you may bump into out in the field. This was a Good thing!

I also completely disagree with any sort of tonnage limit because of the way this game is currently implemented. Players spend huge amounts of time getting used to one type of mech, outfitting said mech, getting their skills up for that mech, etc. To impose a tonnage limit basically tells players there is a good chance they might not be able to play with the mech they spent all their time working to earn. This is universally a Bad idea and should Never be implemented.

Edited by zenstrata, 03 December 2012 - 06:24 AM.

[BFalcon]

zenstrata, on 03 December 2012 - 05:53 AM, said:

Tonnage limits are a mistake, and here is why - Imagine you are a mechwarrior. You get sent on a mission to do something - would you always know exactly what mechs you would face once you arrived? No, of course not!

In fact, I really dislike the matchmaking system as it is currently for this very reason! I want to go into every drop not knowing what I might face. I Want to run into entire teams of lights or assaults and everything between! Because this most closely simulates what it would really be like to be a mechwarrior.

The rest of you sound like you are whining because you might run into some hypothetical 'unfair' scenario. Well get over it soldier! This is battle. All sorts of unknown and crazy stuff can happen in battle. You have to adapt to survive to ever-changing conditions. The only thing you can depend on is your team in battle.

Got news for ya, Menig... any unit that DOESN'T know the ToE of the incoming unit deserves to have their intelligence officer shot - occasionally one will slip by, but generally you'll know the rough composition of the enemy force before you even find them... and then you'll know because your scouts will have spotted and ID'd them a few miles off, as would your aerospace elements...

You would CERTAINLY spot the unit of 48kph Atlases moving through the area, but you might miss the unit of 150kph Lights that moved through an hour earlier... don't forget - there's much more than just mechs in BT and every unit has to move at the speed of its slowest member... and Assaults also show up nicely on those passive recon satellites' scans...

[BoomDog]

Since their intent is to make all mech classes viable, then I see no reason for any limits.

If all the matches devolve to 2 jenners and 6 atlases, then they didn't do something right. And they need to buff the other classes.

Balanced teams should be a natural result of a balanced game.

[Jaynestown]

MWO should use an inducement system to motivate the player base to regulate its own drop weights. For those of you familiar with Blood Bowl, either in table top form or in the recent computer version by Cyanide, you'll recognize what I am about to propose.

For each team, tonnage is unlimited. You could drop with 8 Atlas if you chose to. However, the total tonnage is counted and weighed against the opposing team. The team with the lowest weight receives a bonus based on how much heavier the opposing team is. You could do the same thing with C-Bill value of each team (cheapest team receives bonus per C-Bill, regardless of whether they are lighter or heavier in tons than the opponent).

There are a lot of different ways you could work these bonuses out. Added functionality to the Commander on the lighter or cheaper team. Bonus to C-Bills or XP earned. Weapon damage or heat reduction (less realistic). Battlefield features such as friendly automated turrets at the base. Also, increased capture time required to take the base.

In the end, you would have players carefully considering whether it is worth adding another heavy mech to their team. The heavy teams will get to brawl it out against a tougher opponent, so they should be happy. The light teams might get some added firepower as static base defenses, or the ability for their commander to call in an orbital strike (I believe I read that as a possible module anyway), or they might receive a boost to earned c-bills, xp, salvage, etc.

[Teralitha]

I* think some ppl are forgetting that this request is for 8vs8 premades only. So unless you are going to be doing that... you dont have to cry about having a tonnage limit.

[Kerguidou]

BFalcon, on 03 December 2012 - 06:20 AM, said:

If you don't care about Battletech... the question does occur to me - why do you play this game? Or would you be happy, for example, to see Cylons appear in a Star Trek game? I believe in sticking to the spirit of whichever game you play, otherwise you change it to some horrendous gruel of mismatched genre stereotypes. That's slightly off-topic though...

I've never played the TT game. I've only played MW2 mercenaries and mechassault before. I just like the idea of a mech "simulation"

[zenstrata]

Just as you can post a practically endless list of reasons why a force may know what sort of mechs they will be running into, I can post a nearly endless list of reasons why they may NOT know this. Intelligence reports are never 100% and are often completely wrong.

The one thing you can depend on is your team. Get a good group together, practice and play together, build your group to cope with a wide variety of situations. Oh wait - I forgot (I actually didn't) - We can't play with our full teams right now because people were whining about that too. *sigh*

[BFalcon]

zenstrata, on 03 December 2012 - 06:22 AM, said:

So to start, I played back before there was a match-maker. I enjoyed playing like that. They mystery of having a completely unknown enemy force was fun! I would keep track of every reported/sighted mech on the battlefield and have a variable running tally of enemy force composition during the game in my mind. I Enjoyed this!

Running into teams of all compositions forced players to create different strategies on-the-fly. There was no one-size-fits-all team or setup because you could never predict exactly what you may bump into out in the field. This was a Good thing!

I also completely disagree with any sort of tonnage limit because of the way this game is currently implemented. Players spend huge amounts of time getting used to one type of mech, outfitting said mech, getting their skills up for that mech, etc. To impose a tonnage limit basically tells players there is a good chance they might not be able to play with the mech they spent all their time working to earn. This is universally a Bad idea and should Never be implemented.

Well, largely, the kinds of people who'll be using the 8vs8 system will be premades in formal units, as well as the "pickup premades" that people slot into. Both types often ask what you're dropping in anyhow, so making sure they round out the force and making sure they don't drop with systems like TAG when there's no LRM support, for example.

I also noted that you pilot an Atlas, which I had to learn to do, just to cope with the high number of Atlas pilots we were encountering. Do you agree that forcing players to up their tonnage (I *used* to favour Lights and Mediums) to stay competitive is also fair?

I agree that an element of not knowing what's facing you is fun... I'd just like to see some kind of levelling mechanism in place where we know that we're going to be rewarded for killing an Atlas if we're outgunned by a long way, but also to prevent extreme teams from happening.

I don't think that anyone is looking to force a precise tonnage on anyone else, but rather to make it so that people need to hit a range of tonnages as a group. I also feel that range should be flexible enough to allow *most* people to drop in what they like... *some* might need to be prepared to drop heavier or lighter than they'd prefer or maybe drop with another group, but only because such extreme teams are boring to face (for example, being capped by an all-Jenner team).

[zenstrata]

Any system that potentially punishes players because of their personal mech choice is a bad one.

The game is set up so that unless you have a massive amount of money to throw at it (think thousands of dollars/pounds/lira/whatever). You can never have all the mechs in the game.

Most players will spend weeks or months putting together their chosen mech. To implement a system which punishes players for their choice .. This could potentially drive players away.

And there already IS a mechanism in place to reward players in this fashion. It is called Salvage!

Edited by zenstrata, 03 December 2012 - 06:38 AM.

[Hayashi]

Teralitha, on 03 December 2012 - 05:51 AM, said:

It was already tested in closed beta. And people screamed for a matchmaker. That situation will now be repeated. There is no reason to gather "more" data on something that was already proven to fail. If you want to test it AGAIN, just remove the matchmaker now. Premades do not want unlimited drops. That is not the reason why premades wanted to drop vs premades. I sincerely hope this moderators view doesnt truly reflect the devs view/plan

Was that before or after grouping was allowed? I think it was before. And besides, not only have weapons, equipment and mechs completely changed since then, so has the playerbase.

This game is labelled open Beta, you know.

Some premades would prefer unlimited drops. Just because you are a premade, and you don't want unlimited drops, doesn't mean that all premades will think the same way as you.

Using the current matchmaker style for the 8v8 queue wouldn't work well since people would take forever to find another premade on the queue with the exact same Mech loadout. As for why they didn't use an overall tonnage limit, that's for us to speculate on.

And who started the perception that our views reflect the devs' views anyway? Our line is official only regarding moderation issues; on issues from gameplay to clans to interests to factions, we're not only not official, we're also not even the same as each other. There are premade mods, PuG mods, those who do both, Draconis, Liao, etc. Jeez. If you want the devs' view, the Command Chair itself is the devs' view.

zenstrata, on 03 December 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

I actually had FUN playing that way! If you do not have fun then I can't help but wonder what might be wrong with you.

Nothing needs to be wrong, diversity makes a playerbase. People are born different, raised different, and so act and feel different. Options that allow the maximum number of people with different mindsets to be happy will be the most successful ones.

Jaynestown, on 03 December 2012 - 06:27 AM, said:

MWO should use an inducement system to motivate the player base to regulate its own drop weights. For those of you familiar with Blood Bowl, either in table top form or in the recent computer version by Cyanide, you'll recognize what I am about to propose. For each team, tonnage is unlimited. You could drop with 8 Atlas if you chose to. However, the total tonnage is counted and weighed against the opposing team. The team with the lowest weight receives a bonus based on how much heavier the opposing team is. You could do the same thing with C-Bill value of each team (cheapest team receives bonus per C-Bill, regardless of whether they are lighter or heavier in tons than the opponent).

Actually, this tonnage bonus thing has already been somewhat implemented.

1. The lighter your mech is, the less you pay in repairs, in general. Complicating factors - price of equipment like XL engines or Artemis. Repair = 25% cost of all damaged components.
2. The heavier the opponent's mech is, the more salvage C-Bills you get for destroying them. Complicating factors - how accurate you are. Salvage = 2% cost of undamaged enemy components from dead enemy mechs only divided by number of mechs in your team.

Edited by Hayashi, 03 December 2012 - 06:46 AM.

[Teralitha]

zenstrata, on 03 December 2012 - 06:36 AM, said:

Any system that potentially punishes players because of their personal mech choice is a bad one.

The game is set up so that unless you have a massive amount of money to throw at it (think thousands of dollars/pounds/lira/whatever). You can never have all the mechs in the game.

Most players will spend weeks or months putting together their chosen mech. To implement a system which punishes players for their choice .. This could potentially drive players away.

And there already IS a mechanism in place to reward players in this fashion. It is called Salvage!

Its for 8vs8premades only!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and premades WANT IT.

Heck lets just make this a vote shall we....

[BFalcon]

Jaynestown, on 03 December 2012 - 06:27 AM, said:

MWO should use an inducement system to motivate the player base to regulate its own drop weights. For those of you familiar with Blood Bowl, either in table top form or in the recent computer version by Cyanide, you'll recognize what I am about to propose.

For each team, tonnage is unlimited. You could drop with 8 Atlas if you chose to. However, the total tonnage is counted and weighed against the opposing team. The team with the lowest weight receives a bonus based on how much heavier the opposing team is. You could do the same thing with C-Bill value of each team (cheapest team receives bonus per C-Bill, regardless of whether they are lighter or heavier in tons than the opponent).

There are a lot of different ways you could work these bonuses out. Added functionality to the Commander on the lighter or cheaper team. Bonus to C-Bills or XP earned. Weapon damage or heat reduction (less realistic). Battlefield features such as friendly automated turrets at the base. Also, increased capture time required to take the base.

In the end, you would have players carefully considering whether it is worth adding another heavy mech to their team. The heavy teams will get to brawl it out against a tougher opponent, so they should be happy. The light teams might get some added firepower as static base defenses, or the ability for their commander to call in an orbital strike (I believe I read that as a possible module anyway), or they might receive a boost to earned c-bills, xp, salvage, etc.

I'm in UKBBL, actually, so know precisely what you mean...

I was suggesting something similar, above, as a simpler way of this, in that you'd earn more for being outgunned, as a simpler way of dealing with it (no extra effects or modelling to be done). An Aerotech bombing run would be highly useful vs an all-Atlas team though..

Kerguidou, on 03 December 2012 - 06:32 AM, said:

I've never played the TT game. I've only played MW2 mercenaries and mechassault before. I just like the idea of a mech "simulation"

Fair enough... I just get worried when people start suggesting moving away from a Canon feel... I've seen too many non-Canon attempts at games over the years for various things that I start to get a little defensive (we've all seen the movie tie-ins that end up being little more than a scrolling shoot'em'up and no different to any other, I'm sure).

zenstrata, on 03 December 2012 - 06:32 AM, said:

Just as you can post a practically endless list of reasons why a force may know what sort of mechs they will be running into, I can post a nearly endless list of reasons why they may NOT know this. Intelligence reports are never 100% and are often completely wrong.

The one thing you can depend on is your team. Get a good group together, practice and play together, build your group to cope with a wide variety of situations. Oh wait - I forgot (I actually didn't) - We can't play with our full teams right now because people were whining about that too. *sigh*

This last bit, I agree fully on... but on the first point, you're alienating the "pickup premades" who meet and decide to drop together for a bit of mutual fun and support, but also forgetting the "lolz brigade" who just like to "roflstomp" any drop they come across (right now, probably with Streak-carrying Atlases).

The second point, nobody who has any stake in the subject of this thread wanted the 4-man groups, I'm sure. We'd have much rather have gone to stage three directly. Sadly, this didn't happen.

On the plus side though - Stage 1 DID bring the community back together a little - I found PUG dropping a bit more fun, as I did the group drops (no more finding an all-PUG enemy on an 8-man drop and walking all over them). Heck, we even found ourselves facing our other Company 4-man the other night in practice, so had great fun killing each other...

So even in Stage 1, there's been some upsides... although I think we'll all be glad to hit Stage 3.

[John Norad]

zenstrata, on 03 December 2012 - 05:53 AM, said:

Tonnage limits are a mistake, and here is why - Imagine you are a mechwarrior. You get sent on a mission to do something - would you always know exactly what mechs you would face once you arrived? No, of course not!

Does that mean intel is always supposed to be horribad? What kind of employer are you talking about?
Apart from that MWO matches are bound to be 8vs8 (for the time being), so as a matter of fact it's already colliding with your vision right there.
Might as well make it fair, no?

zenstrata, on 03 December 2012 - 05:53 AM, said:

In fact, I really dislike the matchmaking system as it is currently for this very reason!

The current matchmaking has nothing to do with a tonnage limit. Actually a tonnage limit is a completely different approach to the current MM.
Furthermore a 500t limit (just an example) could result in 8Jenners, 4Atlases+4Commandos, 5Hunchbacks+3Awesomes, 2Ravens+2Centurions+1Dragon+2Catapults+1Cataphract, etc. etc.
What about that is 'exactly knowing what mechs you would face'?
Are you assuming a tonnage limit + class matching? It's not what people are talking about here, and even then there would still be possible differences.

zenstrata, on 03 December 2012 - 05:53 AM, said:

The rest of you sound like you are whining because you might run into some hypothetical 'unfair' scenario. Well get over it soldier! This is battle. All sorts of unknown and crazy stuff can happen in battle. You have to adapt to survive to ever-changing conditions. The only thing you can depend on is your team in battle.

This sounds outright generalizing, condescending and insulting, with a drip of misplaced bravado, so I won't even bother commenting it further.

Edited by John Norad, 03 December 2012 - 06:56 AM.

[Hayashi]

Teralitha, on 03 December 2012 - 06:31 AM, said:

I* think some ppl are forgetting that this request is for 8vs8 premades only. So unless you are going to be doing that... you dont have to cry about having a tonnage limit.

Teralitha, on 03 December 2012 - 06:45 AM, said:

Its for 8vs8premades only!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and premades WANT IT. Heck lets just make this a vote shall we....

Have you considered that the people who are responding to this thread know that this won't affect PuGs? Have you noticed the banner signatures of some of the people disagreeing with you?

PuGs have other threads to post on than on threads regarding changes that have nothing to do with them.

If all premades want there to be limits, why is this thread not filled with only agreement?

Edited by Hayashi, 03 December 2012 - 06:51 AM.

[Symbiodinium]

Ideally, the composition of each team should depend on the community warfare/metagame: how many resources each side has, how much they want to commit to the fight, the win conditions, etc. Given that none of that is in the game right now (you don't even know what map you'll get), and the limited size and scope of the maps and game modes, something else will have to do. We've already tried the game without a matchmaker and while it did produce the occasional fun matchup, I distinctly remember most teams having at least 5 Atlases. I would agree with a tonnage limit, set pretty high to start (500 tons, perhaps). I prefer a tonnage limit because you won't know what you're facing except that it won't be an Atlas wall.

For those of you complaining about freedom of choice, if each game is reduced to who can field the most heavy brawlers, that reduces the scope of the game and the freedom of choice much more than a tonnage limit. A tonnage limit would be less restrictive than the current matchmaker. It also protects a role for those just starting out and haven't earned the cash for heavies/assaults yet.

If you prefer no limits and balancing the mechs based on the results, I'm afraid that 1) not all mechs are equally useful (a legacy from tabletop, that's why BV exists), 2) mechs have different purposes and it would be very difficult to properly measure and assign values to the contributions of each mech, and 3) let's be serious, PGI has enough work trying to keep mechs, weapons and other values balanced as they are.

A reasonable tonnage limit is the best solution, at least for now. Later different missions could have different tonnage limits for more variety.

Edited by Symbiodinium, 03 December 2012 - 06:52 AM.

[zenstrata]

Not all premades want it. I often play with a group and I think tonnage limits are a bad idea. I want to go into every battle not knowing what I will face. I enjoy that sort of challenge. I did not think it was unfair when I ran into whole teams of enemy atlases, jenners, hunchbacks, etc. I Enjoyed that!

For my own group I thought that a diverse group worked best, simply because this sort of team makeup allowed us to cope with a large variety of scenarios.

Of course the best fix would be to put in worlds with huge continent areas like the new planetside has. Then let large teams and groups stomp around on those and fight it out. It would be without a tonnage limit, every battle would be completely random, and the maps would be large enough to have aerospace too.

[BFalcon]

zenstrata, on 03 December 2012 - 06:36 AM, said:

Any system that potentially punishes players because of their personal mech choice is a bad one.

The game is set up so that unless you have a massive amount of money to throw at it (think thousands of dollars/pounds/lira/whatever). You can never have all the mechs in the game.

Most players will spend weeks or months putting together their chosen mech. To implement a system which punishes players for their choice .. This could potentially drive players away.

And there already IS a mechanism in place to reward players in this fashion. It is called Salvage!

Hey, one solution for you, if they DO introduce tonnage limits - just partner up with a Jenner or a Commando pilot... you'll average out about right then...

Hayashi: small problem with the Salvage being the equalling factor - not many Cataphracts, Cats or Hunchies will last long against an equal number of Atlases... so you're likely to only kill a few before you get buried, making the salvage probably less than if you'd had an even tonnage initially and managed to destroy all but one of the other side...

[Grraarrgghh]

Where's the voting option for "who gives a ****, you all take robots way too seriously"?