118 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

Quote

The beauty of MWO is that you don't know what that hunchback (or anyone else) is packing

IMO thats a bad thing. It ruins the immersion factor when mechs are running around with weapons you would never see them equipped with in tabletop. Mechs in MWO should have more clearly defined roles. The skill trees for each mech should be custom tailored to that mechs role.

[Protection]

I actually like this idea as well.

It isn't about ruining the K2-Gaussapult/AC20 Boat / SRM6 Catapult etc,

It's about making the poor sobs using PPCs on their K2 and LRMs on their A1 less ******.

[Vassago Rain]

Protection, on 07 February 2013 - 04:49 PM, said:

I actually like this idea as well.

It isn't about ruining the K2-Gaussapult/AC20 Boat / SRM6 Catapult etc,

It's about making the poor sobs using PPCs on their K2 and LRMs on their A1 less ******.

Then why can't those guns be good on their own merits instead?

[Protection]

Vassago Rain, on 07 February 2013 - 04:51 PM, said:

Then why can't those guns be good on their own merits instead?

Because convincing the vast majority of the playerbase that balance adjustments are required is exceedingly difficult.

And then we have to hope that PGI agrees.

A roundabout convoluted work-around idea like this is something PGI might actually listen to.

It's stupid, I know, but my dreams of adequate weapon balance died long ago.

[Khobai]

Quote

Then why can't those guns be good on their own merits instead?

Because perfect balance is impossible and there always has to be a subset of weapons that are better than the rest. The only real way to get around that is by giving bonuses to underdog weapons when they're used on certain mechs.

So for example, most players agree the AC/10 sucks, but what if Cataphracts got a bonus when using AC/10s which made them fire 10% faster and 10% generate less heat? You'd start to see AC/10s getting used on Cataphracts at least. Which is better than AC/10s not getting used at all.

That's an example of how to retain the spirit of mechs while simultaneously keeping underdog weapons as a viable options. You can still play the Cataphract however you want, but if you do play the Cataphract like youre supposed to, you get a bonus for doing so. And that bonus also helps promote a weapon which otherwise wouldn't see use in the game.

Edited by Khobai, 07 February 2013 - 05:16 PM.

[Vassago Rain]

Khobai, on 07 February 2013 - 05:03 PM, said:

Because perfect balance is impossible and there always has to be a subset of weapons that are better than the rest. The only real way to get around that though is by making sure the underdog weapons are worth using on certain mechs. And you do that by giving certain mechs bonuses for using certain weapons.

You don't need perfect balance. You need more than 4 weapons out of like 30 to be useful. That's not hard, and woulsd solve most of the complaining.

[Commander Kobold]

3rdworld, on 07 February 2013 - 06:58 AM, said:

No, I mix arbitrarily limiting customization -> battletech and not limiting customization -> Mechwarrior.

not once did he suggest nerfing or limiting customization, the OP just suggested adding some quirks to certain variants to give a bonus of some sort to the mechs intended role (and they do have them), <he didn't say "NERF BOOM CAT q_q" he said give the K2 a bonus for using it's PPCs or what not>

[Like a Sir]

Khobai, on 07 February 2013 - 05:03 PM, said:

Because perfect balance is impossible and there always has to be a subset of weapons that are better than the rest. The only real way to get around that though is by making sure the underdog weapons are worth using on certain mechs. And you do that by giving certain mechs bonuses for using certain weapons.

Going off this, if there is indeed a subset of weapons that is superior, and you end up forcing all the mechs in their designated roles, the mechs that can equip those weapons will be superior, and people will start fleeing like rats. Here you only control one mech after all.

Now one more question. What if against all odds, the pilot does manage to double or triple you "average" damage for the build/chassis, just based on the piloting skills alone and the fact that here we can aim instead of rolling a die, to see where damage goes... Should we possibly come up with max damage per chassis, and shut off your weapons once you get there, since we don't want you to break that mold?

[Khobai]

Quote

Going off this, if there is indeed a subset of weapons that is superior, and you end up forcing all the mechs in their designated roles, the mechs that can equip those weapons will be superior, and people will start fleeing like rats. Here you only control one mech after all.

Which is why the mechs that cant equip those weapons need bonuses to make up the difference. For example, an Awesome cant compete with the Stalker. We all know that. So the Awesome should get a bonus to using energy weapons to help make up the difference... the catch being that bonus only applies to specific energy weapons like PPCs. What that would do is help make the Awesome and Stalker more equal and also help reinforce the role of the Awesome as a PPC boat.

Quote

You don't need perfect balance. You need more than 4 weapons out of like 30 to be useful. That's not hard, and woulsd solve most of the complaining.

Its actually more difficult than you think to balance all those weapons closely enough so that a handful of them arn't outright better than the rest. Especially when you can't touch any weight/crit stats because you want players to be able to play their favorite stock designs. PGI is really limited in what stats they can change. And it doesn't help that their punitive heat system heavily favors the weapons which do the most damage per heat.

IMO its a mistake to try and fix the problem through weapon balance alone. Its just not going to happen. Ever. No matter how much tweaking you do there will always be weapons that the vast majority of the player base prefers. And the only way I ever see that changing is if certain mechs force players out of their comfort zone by giving bonuses to weapons they normally wouldnt use.

Edited by Khobai, 07 February 2013 - 05:28 PM.

[Protection]

Vassago Rain, on 07 February 2013 - 05:05 PM, said:

You don't need perfect balance. You need more than 4 weapons out of like 30 to be useful. That's not hard, and woulsd solve most of the complaining.

One of the things is that there really isn't a good reason to, say, put PPCs on an Awesome instead of a Stalker.

The Awesome is supposed to be a PPC sniper mech, but because of it's fat design, it largely fails in the role. The idea that there could be some incentive to use it as such might go beyond simply "fixing the weapons," because rival chassis will still (and always) fill the job much better. But if it had a PPC buff, then PPC Awesome might find a use, where an improved PPC simply makes the PPC Stalker more viable while the Awesome remains junk.

On the other hand, maybe we are probably clinging to Mechwarrior/Battletech lore a little too hard, and maybe we should just come to accept that the Awesome is a fat point blank speed machine and that the Catapult is the close range brawler king.

Although I suppose the other option is to fix the chassis so it isn't so fat, but that seems like an awful lot of work...

[Like a Sir]

Khobai, on 07 February 2013 - 05:15 PM, said:

Which is why the mechs that cant equip those weapons need bonuses to make up the difference. For example, an Awesome cant compete with the Stalker. We all know that. So the Awesome should get a bonus to using energy weapons to help make up the difference... the catch being that bonus only applies to specific energy weapons like PPCs. What that would do is help make the Awesome and Stalker more equal and also help reinforce the role of the Awesome as a PPC boat.



Its actually more difficult than you think to balance all those weapons closely enough so that a handful of them arn't outright better than the rest. Especially when you can't touch any weight/crit stats because you want players to be able to play their favorite stock designs. PGI is really limited in what stats they can change. And it doesn't help that their punitive heat system heavily favors the weapons which do the most damage per heat.

IMO its a mistake to try and fix the problem through weapon balance alone. Its just not going to happen. Ever. No matter how much tweaking you do there will always be weapons that the vast majority of the player base prefers. And the only way I ever see that changing is if certain mechs force players out of their comfort zone by giving bonuses to weapons they normally wouldnt use.

Don't get me wrong... I like some of these ideas. I do, I just think that if it ever got implemented the bonus should be there but barely noticeable if only so that people could still have their diversity, and not feel like they have to go the route pointed out to them... I mean we just can't make this game like TT online, or you'll simply have to point your mech in a general direction of your opponent hit the button and have a virtual dice determine where and how hard they would get hit... I know it's an extreme example, I am simply using it to show that we can't have this game be the virtual copy of the TT battles.

[Asmudius Heng]

I just wanted to state that weapon balance should indeed be a higher priority than quirks for mechs and roles etc - however mech character is important to many people including newbies who don't know BT.

When i purchase a mech I want to see the history of that mech, its design, its original roles, famous battles. When you buy that mech it becomes more than a utilitarian purchase about the combat, it gives a sense of history, lore and ownership. Right now massive mech bays full of so many mechs ... they are like work boots you slip on and off not war machines with character, pros and cons, and field fitting custom jobs for your personal preferences ... they are just mathematical constructs for wins and that makes me sad.

I am a competitive player and have been for many years. I min max because you need to to win, i just want to see more variety, divorce, flavour and character while people still min max - allowing for more tactics and counter tactics.

Those that are like me do not want to stop custom peoples fun - both can co-exist.

[Joseph Mallan]

Yokaiko, on 07 February 2013 - 02:41 PM, said:

In TT you used it to shut down entire sections of the map.

NOTHING wanted to eat three PPCs so they stayed covered rather than chance it.

Not My experience with Awesome!

[Beo Vulf]

Why limit the customization? Was customization limited in MW2, MW3, MW4, or LL? Did every Mech in those games have to go out and fight with their original load, out or were you able to customize them just like you can in MWO. Let there be customization so people can build their favorite mech to suite themselves.

[Asmudius Heng]

Beo Vulf, on 07 February 2013 - 05:58 PM, said:

Why limit the customization? Was customization limited in MW2, MW3, MW4, or LL? Did every Mech in those games have to go out and fight with their original load, out or were you able to customize them just like you can in MWO. Let there be customization so people can build their favorite mech to suite themselves.

Wow - reading comprehension fail as well as facts wrong too.

No one is asking to limit your customisation. Stop that fallacy.

MW4 was much more restricted than MWO due to hardpoint sizes - though the components system and engines were very dumbed down - mind you still more customisable than MWO.

MW2 & 3 were very open and it led to a huge war of boats of certain weapons which killed a lot of diversity in the game. I have not played LL so will leave that to the side.

Read the thread and understand peoples arguments please or you add fuel to a fire ... this is not about stopping customisation. Stop this silliness and misleading posts please.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Role of a Mech is decided iy it's loadout. Yes, the Stalker was originally designed to break down walls and decimate standing defenses as it slowly walked up to the defended location, and it carries a variety of weapons with marked ranges for that very purpose, LL and LRM for long range, ML for medium and SRM for up close work, and that's right out of the fluff for it no less. It's a very slow moving weapons platform that's capable of combat at any range, a walking turret without any twist to speak of. Fills that role great in it's standard config too, but what perks/quirks do you give a big slow moving Mech that carries LRMs, SRMs, LL and ML and is specifically designed to use ALL of them well?

The Awesome, designed to be on the vanguard of an attack, but with weapons that are really meant to be used at range, not up close, and a profile that is just..well..lets face it, suicidially huge from the front, so it's got lots of armor to soak damage and hopefully remove the threats before they eat through the armor. Again, this is from the fluff for the Mech, not making this up or giving the Mechs attributes the designers didn't intend.

The physical designs of the Mechs are often at odds with their intended roles as defined by their stock weapon loadout, maybe you folks missed that? And they are often at odds with their various standard out of the factory variants as well, again, due to the exact same reason, role is defined by weapon loadout, not physical shape of the Mech.

Long range LRM support Mech, lets see..we'll make it have a huge cockpit that's easy to see across the battlefield and put all it's weapons in these 2 big pods standing off each side of it's head, easy to hit and easy to take out the only weapons the Mech carries! Who thought that design up and why were they even allowed to offer the design up in the first place? What military person stood there, looked at that dumb design and said 'YES! PERFECT! We'll take a hundred!'...and why wasn't he court martialled and shot the moment someone got a look at the Catapult and saw it's designated role? Same with the Awesome and so many other Mechs, just LOOK at them and think about their designated role on the battlefield, and think about what you would have done to the moron who gave you that design in the first place.

Yeah, they LOOK really cool and all that but fact is, most Mechs fail horribly at their designed function based on physical shape.

[Beo Vulf]

Asmudius Heng, on 07 February 2013 - 06:08 PM, said:

Wow - reading comprehension fail as well as facts wrong too.

No one is asking to limit your customisation. Stop that fallacy.

MW4 was much more restricted than MWO due to hardpoint sizes - though the components system and engines were very dumbed down - mind you still more customisable than MWO.

MW2 & 3 were very open and it led to a huge war of boats of certain weapons which killed a lot of diversity in the game. I have not played LL so will leave that to the side.

Read the thread and understand peoples arguments please or you add fuel to a fire ... this is not about stopping customisation. Stop this silliness and misleading posts please.

Lo he was propounding the limiting of customization so don't give me that **** about reading comprehension.

[Wolfways]

Kristov Kerensky, on 07 February 2013 - 06:10 PM, said:

The physical designs of the Mechs are often at odds with their intended roles as defined by their stock weapon loadout, maybe you folks missed that? And they are often at odds with their various standard out of the factory variants as well, again, due to the exact same reason, role is defined by weapon loadout, not physical shape of the Mech.

Long range LRM support Mech, lets see..we'll make it have a huge cockpit that's easy to see across the battlefield and put all it's weapons in these 2 big pods standing off each side of it's head, easy to hit and easy to take out the only weapons the Mech carries! Who thought that design up and why were they even allowed to offer the design up in the first place? What military person stood there, looked at that dumb design and said 'YES! PERFECT! We'll take a hundred!'...and why wasn't he court martialled and shot the moment someone got a look at the Catapult and saw it's designated role? Same with the Awesome and so many other Mechs, just LOOK at them and think about their designated role on the battlefield, and think about what you would have done to the moron who gave you that design in the first place.

Yeah, they LOOK really cool and all that but fact is, most Mechs fail horribly at their designed function based on physical shape.

Well obviously whoever designed the mechs was designing them for a game where every mech used the same paperdoll and hits were determined randomly, so it essentially didn't matter what the mech looked like.
Mechs were designed to allow players to buy little metal figures.

Of course in an fps where we can aim that leads to some mechs being better suited to different roles than they were originally "designed for", or even just better then other mechs completely.

But i'm all for finding some way to have mechs being better at their intended role.
Although i was wondering how to make the Stalker-3F better at its role...

[Asmudius Heng]

Vanguard may not mean the Awesome leads the charge ... it might just mean on a much larger scale lances with Awesomes would be in the first wave but will still have other mechs with them to cover them if something gets in close.

Awesomes were traditionally hard hitting due to PPCs but could handle that heat very easily by alternating fire a little. It could move and function very well managing its heat and moving at a decent speed so was perfectly suited to a lance advancing on the enemy.

The Stalker on the other hand was designed to change what it fired depending on the range it was at. You could not alpha everything at once - it was a multi-role-multi-range mech with serious heat issues because of this trade off. It was a versatile mech because thats the way the TT game worked.

When it translated into MWO the sheer number of weapons it had forced larger numbers of hardpoints which would be abused for extreme moating at a single range. This being effective meant it become a much better overall mech than the Awesome and was given terrible manoeuvrability as a balancer which is a good idea anyway.

So the TT roles are there and are fine, but the translation to MWO due to the mechanics in general mean this does not quite fit as well as it should. there are some more harsh ways to enforce these things such as size restricted hardpoints but people will slit my throat in the night for even suggesting such a thing .... so instead giving perks and quirks to encourage the initial design concept is a way to help make it more of a reality without stopping anyones fun with customisation.

The actual hit boxes are one of the big issues here though with the Awesome being easy to hit, i need to get an Awesome and see if using the arms as shields between shots actually helps its survivability but i still think the Stalker wins due to sheer damage output as long as it is not flanked badly.

I might even put together a list of perks for each mech based on lore just for the fun of it but i am sure someone would scream at me for daring to touch the precious balance and mechanics of a game that is still evolving anyway ....

[QuantumButler]

Roles are irrelevant, being able to kill the enemy is the only thing that matters.