351 replies to this topic

[Sidekick]

no

[Monsoon]

I've had no problem running a short range fighter, just wait until the right moments to strike, or sit back and cover the backs of your Assault and Missile mechs.

[Raso]

Thontor, on 21 February 2013 - 07:41 AM, said:

No

Elaborate oh wise one.

Edited by Raso, 21 February 2013 - 08:03 AM.

[Baltasar]

Monsoon, on 21 February 2013 - 07:45 AM, said:

I've had no problem running a short range fighter, just wait until the right moments to strike, or sit back and cover the backs of your Assault and Missile mechs.

That would require that horrible thing called patience...I mean who would want to do that

[Raso]

Thontor, on 21 February 2013 - 08:09 AM, said:

I and many others have elaborated many times. If you really want to know, read the thread.

So the argument is "because it kind of simulates canon almost"? I'm sorry but that's a terrible argument and anyone who would use it to justify a lack of streamlined and intuitive matchmaking options is a moron. You can role play your grizzled, single mech pilot to your heart's content. Don't force the same upon others.

Oh, maybe when you're mech is destroyed we should also delete your account if you don't eject in time because your character died? Wow, wouldn't that be so true to cannon? Where do we draw the line? At what point does basic, 21st century game design features trump canon?

[Lukoi Banacek]

Raso, on 21 February 2013 - 08:15 AM, said:

So the argument is "because it kind of simulates canon almost"? I'm sorry but that's a terrible argument and anyone who would use it to justify a lack of streamlined and intuitive matchmaking options is a moron. You can role play your grizzled, single mech pilot to your heart's content. Don't force the same upon others.

Oh, maybe when you're mech is destroyed we should also delete your account if you don't eject in time because your character died? Wow, wouldn't that be so true to cannon? Where do we draw the line? At what point does basic, 21st century game design features trump canon?

When PGI ******* says so. Chill out.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

How do you balance a drop when you can pick mechs AFTER it selects a map?

Think about that.

[Tarman]

Raso, on 21 February 2013 - 07:28 AM, said:

The option to select you mech AFTER you know what map you're going to drop on would solve this problem. What mech warrior would bring a PPC sniper to a tight, urban setting to a brawler to a large, flat, dessert?

Honestly I don't know we we haven't gotten this yet. Don't let people mess with builds just let us choose from several, valid mechs which are ready to drop. Give us about 15 seconds to make our choice and if you don't choose something in that time it defaults to what ever you had selected in your mechbay before you launched.

BOOM problem solved. You can bring your 4SP out to play on River City and Forrest Colony with out fear of gimping yourself and others on Alpine Peaks.

The problem is thinking one mech with one loadout works for all occasions. Alldayerrydaymechin. In this case, brawler loadouts. If brawling is your whole game then you have to accept you're not going to be optimal on all fields. Just like LR support guys have been stuck on River City where they can shoot at each other literally after the startup sequence and then be swarmed by 3Ls in under twenty seconds. You know that's not even hyperbole.

Brawling is part of the game. It is not and was not intended to be the entire game. More maps of larger size are coming. The meta is changing, just like it has a bunch of times with all kinds of other big additions to the game. Adapt or die, pilot.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Tarman, on 21 February 2013 - 08:21 AM, said:

Brawling is part of the game. It is not and was not intended to be the entire game. More maps of larger size are coming. The meta is changing, just like it has a bunch of times with all kinds of other big additions to the game. Adapt or die, pilot.

This guy gets it. But stop stealing my line!

[Max Liao]

Raso, on 21 February 2013 - 08:15 AM, said:

So the argument is "because it kind of simulates canon almost"? I'm sorry but that's a terrible argument and anyone who would use it to justify a lack of streamlined and intuitive matchmaking options is a moron.

Herp-a-derp. Anyone who who eschew canon simply because it doesn't fit his play style should find another robot simulation to play.

Raso, on 21 February 2013 - 08:15 AM, said:

You can role play your grizzled, single mech pilot to your heart's content. Don't force the same upon others.

Not forcing anything. I think all people are saying is that it doesn't fit the BattleTech/MechWarrior motif. Then again, neither does unfettered customization of BattleMechs, the current implementation of ECM, and ... so on .. so I suppose you do have precedent of PGI bucking tradition.

Raso, on 21 February 2013 - 08:15 AM, said:

Oh, maybe when you're mech is destroyed we should also delete your account if you don't eject in time because your character died? Wow, wouldn't that be so true to cannon? Where do we draw the line? At what point does basic, 21st century game design features trump canon?

Account may be to far, but 'Mech - sure, I'd play that. Seriously. Especially in community warfare.

Edited by Max Liao, 21 February 2013 - 08:27 AM.

[Skaroth]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 21 February 2013 - 08:19 AM, said:

How do you balance a drop when you can pick mechs AFTER it selects a map?

Think about that.

Just select the maps (with the mech you want for that map) you want to queue for. Like old school WoW battlegrounds... You queued for the map you wanted. This would likely increase queue times and slow the game down but it would work.

[Tarman]

Lukoi, on 21 February 2013 - 08:24 AM, said:

This guy gets it. But stop stealing my line!

I will pay you the C500 for the copyright fees.

[Raso]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 21 February 2013 - 08:19 AM, said:

How do you balance a drop when you can pick mechs AFTER it selects a map?

Think about that.

If you're running as a team it shouldn't be much of a problem. If you're running as a pug it's no different than it is now. If you're referring to matching up the 2 groups ton to ton I've never seen how this as a problem. If I'm not mistaken, 8 man teams don't even match on ton to ton (they when they first started didn't at least) so how do these super, competitive teams of players deal with miss matched tonnage?

Granted each weight class also isn't exactly balanced, but that's not a problem with match making that's a problem with balance. One of the problems that has plagued this game's never-ending development is that rather than fixing problems themselves they rework half the system to work around them. Rather than making it easier for pugs to play as a team and find fellow gamers PGI sent them to the exile. Rather than making base capping less of a map wide circle jerk by incentivising it's defense, increasing capture time, or other balance changes they simply took out the reward for a cap but left it in there.

It is not going to be easy to make things right but it's better to start walking along that road now rather than continuing to sweep things under the rug and moving anything which is difficult to look at under the rug.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

You don't really understand what you are asking for it. My head hurts. I'm actually going to get back to work.

Edited by Nicholas Carlyle, 21 February 2013 - 08:38 AM.

[Raso]

Tarman, on 21 February 2013 - 08:21 AM, said:

The problem is thinking one mech with one loadout works for all occasions. Alldayerrydaymechin. In this case, brawler loadouts. If brawling is your whole game then you have to accept you're not going to be optimal on all fields. Just like LR support guys have been stuck on River City where they can shoot at each other literally after the startup sequence and then be swarmed by 3Ls in under twenty seconds. You know that's not even hyperbole.

Brawling is part of the game. It is not and was not intended to be the entire game. More maps of larger size are coming. The meta is changing, just like it has a bunch of times with all kinds of other big additions to the game. Adapt or die, pilot.

So explain to me how having a mech which is specilized for several maps is not adaptation? You're saying there is no Alldayeverydaymech but it sounds like you're actually saying that you should make a mech that's omnirole so you don't have to worry about the map being a poor map.... or an Alldayeverydaymech (except it would under-preform of almost every map and at almost every range). There are few mechs that have such flexibility and even then few builds per each of those mechs.

People gravitate towards FTW builds, it's the sad, sad nature of online gaming. People want one mech to rule them all, and all the better if all of the research and tweaking for said build was done on someone else's K/D spread. If we have to choose between these maps that range in 2 extremes, between brawler dominated maps vs the newer long range dominated maps than what do you think most gamers will do? Do you think we'll see more verity in builds and people playing the mechs they like or do you think we'll see people playing the same 4 or 5 builds like we did when ECM came out? The ability to select what mech you want to use when you know where you're dropping could help to alleviate some of that mentality and open up more specialized builds. Otherwise you can expect to see a new wave of under preforming, FTW, omnirole builds.

[Xeanth]

Kylere, on 19 February 2013 - 03:52 PM, said:

Wow, the number of people being outright Richards in this thread is phenomenal.

I did not read splatcat in the original post, but it appears a good number of people autowhine that subject whenever possible.

No more than people "autowhine" about EMC,RAV 3L's, Ssrm's, or free mechbays.

[jay35]

FrupertApricot, on 19 February 2013 - 03:18 PM, said:

GOOD. Unbalanced builds that boat a short range weapon have limited uses and some people will finally have to deal with it.

I do not understand why this conflation of issues is so popular and accepted. Boating is an entirely different issue and random maps is not the solution to boating, if it even needs a solution (arguably it doesn't, because there are natural counters to every type of boat and they work on any map).

The issue here is that random map dropping is abnormal and unfriendly for multiplayer team-oriented gameplay.

As maps increase in diversity of terrain, size, and climate, teams are increasingly unable to properly prepare for the map by taking appropriate mechs, loadouts and camo for the environment in which they will be fighting.

That's the number one issue with random maps: A negative impact on strategy and teamwork, as well as reduced enjoyment for the players.

The other issue, which hasn't been identified yet because most people are short-sighted, is that having random drops on a wide diversity of environments actually REDUCES the number of viable mech builds because it automatically limits the range of viable builds that can perform with any consistency across all maps, forcing the player to take the same mech into every map out of fear of getting a map where their build won't work. The further the extremes in climates and terrain, the fewer builds retain effectiveness and the more generic and similar builds become, until every match starts to look nearly identical because only a handful of builds are worthwhile to take when you don't know ahead of time which map you'll be dropping into.

You're actually trading one type of uniformity for another. The thing is, the issue of boating can be countered naturally in the game. The uniformity of generic build "omni-use" mechs, however, cannot be countered because they are simply the only builds that work well across all maps. Instead of excelling on certain maps, they'll just be slightly more effective across all maps on average. How utterly boring!

And a third factor is that random drops without, at a bare minimum, the ability to exclude certain maps from the rotation, results in reduced player satisfaction and a shorter time to burnout on the game because there are some maps players simply hate and do not want to play on.

All of this is resolved by having a proper lobby match creation interface and ditching the console-legacy random matchmaking nonsense that has no place in a proper PC multiplayer game experience.

Edited by jay35, 21 February 2013 - 08:58 AM.

[Raso]

Max Liao, on 21 February 2013 - 08:26 AM, said:

Herp-a-derp. Anyone who who eschew canon simply because it doesn't fit his play style should find another robot simulation to play.

So you're saying all of the Mech Warrior video games, up until now, where you can customize your mechs and select what you want to drop with have been nothing but lies? Of that even TT, where you can customize your mechs and have several builds because is all just some sort of... what? Propaganda put out by canon haters to distract us from what all the canon in the books teach us?

There is already precedent that the Mech Warrior games place certain standards of game design over certain ideas of canon. I mean why would you note how customizable a mech is only to not let someone customize it because only, like, 40 pilots at any one given time have the money to actually afford to do something like that? Because it's true to the books or the lore? Lets go further. Lets make it so you don't actually own a mech but your mech is loaned to you by a house on a per mission basis and you get little, if any, say in which mech you are given. I mean it's not too far from canon, as I grasp it. Would it be fun? Who cares! It's canon that means it's intrinsically better!

[van Uber]

Raso, on 21 February 2013 - 08:43 AM, said:

So explain to me how having a mech which is specilized for several maps is not adaptation? You're saying there is no Alldayeverydaymech but it sounds like you're actually saying that you should make a mech that's omnirole so you don't have to worry about the map being a poor map.... or an Alldayeverydaymech (except it would under-preform of almost every map and at almost every range). There are few mechs that have such flexibility and even then few builds per each of those mechs.

People gravitate towards FTW builds, it's the sad, sad nature of online gaming. People want one mech to rule them all, and all the better if all of the research and tweaking for said build was done on someone else's K/D spread. If we have to choose between these maps that range in 2 extremes, between brawler dominated maps vs the newer long range dominated maps than what do you think most gamers will do? Do you think we'll see more verity in builds and people playing the mechs they like or do you think we'll see people playing the same 4 or 5 builds like we did when ECM came out? The ability to select what mech you want to use when you know where you're dropping could help to alleviate some of that mentality and open up more specialized builds. Otherwise you can expect to see a new wave of under preforming, FTW, omnirole builds.

Not letting people choose Mech after map promotes diverse builds. Either you go versatile or you specialize and adapt to your surroundings. The instant I dropped on the new map with my brawler Atlas, a complete new gameplay opend up. I enjoyed that.

A more diverse gameplay means less FTW builds and I would also appreciate that.

[Mackensen]

Thontor, on 21 February 2013 - 08:25 AM, said:

The real argument is that people being able to choose mechs specialized for the environment because they know what it is going to be ahead of time is bad for the game... And will make it less fun.

It has nothing to do with canon really, the fact it follows it more closely is just a side effect.

That is no argument it is just an opinion. I think it would be more fun to play mechs adapted for specific environments. Weapons, camo etc should fit the conditions expected on the map.