pg1
1721
It isn’t balanced, many weapons are better but they are still tweaking it. I also don’t want to play a perfectly balance game, that’s quite boring. Yet think of it like this as well, it’s much easier to use one weapon system than multiple weapons. Why take missiles, ballistics and lasers if you don’t have to? The hard points force builds that are limited to X, Y and Z for weapons. If you want high damage and DPS you need to use it all. That often means you take weapons which aren’t the best in each category because of critical slots or weight limits. Yet if there were no hard points it’s much more likely you’d boat one weapon system due to ease of use.
The HBK-4P is a good example of boating, it’s got 9 laser hard points. In canon and by design it is a laser boat. You will almost never see someone run it with a mix of SL, ML, and LL. I’ve seen people use two different lasers on it but never three. Most run it with all the same type of laser. It makes the game much harder to play and arguably you’re less efficient as well if using various weapons. Hard points force using various weapons which aren’t ideal. I think it’s more interesting as a result.
Sure I agree with that part but I still think the main reason they did variants and different hard points was because of gameplay. If they didn’t have variants they would have some other grind system to make up the gap. I think you are saying they did variants for the grind primarily, where as I’m arguing they did it primarily for gameplay and forced variety.
I keep checking back, hoping that they either release something really awesome or that they kind of fixed the horrible lag problems, but neither seems to have happened. I think this is the only game I’ve pined for to suck less after finding it to be unplayable.
While I am fine with interestingly unbalanced games, MWO doesn’t really have interestingly unbalanced weapons. Better balance there would only help.
Also, not managing to make adaptable loadouts neccessary or useful is more a failing of their utterly bland and terrible open maps than a feather in the cap of forced hardpoints.
I think I agree with TurinTur on that one. On one hand you’re right, they would have to find another way to increase the grind and misery to coerce people to spend more money. On the other hand the variants and pilot tree requirements are just obnoxious. I got a dragon variant that had multiple ballistic hardpoints thinking it might be fun to put a gauss rifle and medium laser in each arm for sniping and ammo-free close range. But I couldn’t do that because whatever doucebag designed it put all three ballistic hardpoints in one arm and both lasers in the other. Beyond moronic “Haha, you have to buy another mech to do that!” reasoning why on earth would you put three ACs in one arm and leave an entire arm for two lasers when ACs are like five times the size of lasers? There’s nothing gameplay-enabling about it, if anything it encourages you to just go buy the variant that lets you do all-PPC-Jenners or Gaussapults because you CAN’T try variations.
Janster
1723
I think the problem is closing range speed, its just so quick to close ranges, even with my Atlas…
So close range heavy hitters aren’t out of range that long really…and some weapons like large pulse lasers have simply no real reason for being. They are heavily outmatched by SRM6 or mediums …
pg1
1724
I’m starting to feel this as well. There are some obvious things they need to implement but it keeps lagging eventually everyone will turn on them. I think they have a few more months or so before most people get fed up with with their slow development.
Depends, I guess what is interesting to you. I find LRM15-20, SRM6, Gauss, UAC5, AC20, ML, LL and PPCs to be the strong and useful weapons. Are they that interesting? I’d say no MWO weapons are that unique. SSRM2s are strong on ECM lights but they are boring, bland autoaim weapons I don’t enjoy using or fighting against.
I think the maps are quite well done myself. Each has a standard opening defensive play and a few options for more aggressive play. Even in games that have thousands of maps people usually end up only playing a handful anyways. One of the best things they could do is release a map maker though.
Yeah the upgrade and unlock paths are very intentionally a grind and suck I agree. That’s one of my biggest single dislikes about MWO. One thing it has forced me to do is use mechs I wouldn’t normally however. I’ve actually ended up liking quite a few mechs that I was grinding in to unlock upgrades. A couple I just hated however so it’s been a mixed result overall.
Why didn’t you check before you bought it? I know you can’t check in game, which is stupid unless there’s the same trial mech available yet there’s lots of external resources, wiki, mech labs, etc. This is the one I use most now - http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/mechlab
See I strongly disagree on this. You can put 3xAC2 which is a certain style of play you might not see otherwise. Having all weapons in the arms is a big advantage to aiming as well but prone to losing them to damage. To me the hard point system forces variety and more trade offs than what would occur without any hard points. If there were no hard points at all you’d see everyone boating a few weapons to the extreme much worse than it is now.
The fact that you say that is why I don’t think there’s anything interesting about the weapon imbalances. If there’s nothing interesting or unique about the different weapons beyond “This one does more deeps,” you might as well just balance them instead of saying “Making these ones useful would make it all less interesting!”
Because
Yeah. This was a few months ago before there were easy to find online guides. Naturaly the actual devs suck at this topic and all the work is done by fans.
See, I wanted to fit two gauss rifles or other big ACs for silly times, not three little AC2s. I might have gone all out and made an AC2 boat for the laughs, but THESE ARE NOT OPTIONS THEY ALLOW. Without hard points, or at least with hard points you can spread across the mech instead of locked into one spot, I could go around trying whatever fruity loadout I felt like. Instead it’s “THE ONLY THING YOU CAN DO WITH THIS LOADOUT IS PUT THREE AC2s OR ONE BIG AC ON THIS ARM.” LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMEEEEEEEEEEE. It doesn’t really promote variety because it forces you into tiny inflexible niches for each mech variant, and people still use Streakcats.
Janster
1726
Thought you could fit an ac5 in addition to the ac2’s . Still I often run mechs without using all hard points if it means I can fit something cool. Also ac2 are great at scaring off lrm boats on the hill…
pg1
1727
Yeah but I’d say the same about 99.8% of game weapons out there. It’s all standard stuff we’ve seen before. Missiles, lasers, ballistics, and electronic warfare is all things described in the books and tabletop. What can they actually do to make it interesting? Tactically each weapon has it’s nuances right now which is well done. Some are good up close, some are good for distance, some are good for burst damage, and other various considerations. I find playing the game engaging but the weapons alone are boring by themselves.
This is exactly why it forces variety. Everyone wants to put a Gauss or big ACs in all their mechs. Instead in this variant using 3xAC2 makes a lot of sense due to the hard point restrictions. I’m looking at variety overall to see what mechs will be on the battlefield. I’m not looking at it on a mech by mech basis. You seem to want mechs able to be built anyway possible, while in theory that’d increase variety what actually ends up is everyone ends up using the same builds on every variant.
Well I agree with you on most games’ weapons, but that’s also kind of why they balance them a little bit instead of leaving some “the best” and some “utterly worthless”.
As opposed to how it is now where there’s only one build for each and it seems like everyones ends up using the same variant? I actually suggested having the hardpoints be flexible so you would still be randomly limited in weapon selection but at least you could shuffle the placements around. This is one of those things where it would be nice to see what the actual usage statistics for each variant are, like Blizzard’s charts showing what percentage of people used each rune in a skill for D3. That way you could see if 80% of people used only one variant of a mech, or that only 5% of people ever actually use dragon or centurion mechs.
As an aside I totally would’ve loved to be able to try fitting a mech with 3 AC2s on each arm and having so much ammo that I exploded like a fireworks factory on a critical hit.
A bigger issue I think is the limited scope of the game, so that the only things that really matter are alpha strike and sheer weight of firepower. I see so many builds that would be ludicrous in any of the source material milieus, because you really don’t need utility or anything but the ability to dump raw DPS.
pg1
1730
I disagree again. :-) I’ll use the CPLT-K2 as an example since I know it well. A couple viable builds:
-2xUAC5, 4xML
-2xLBX10, 4xML
-2xGauss (rest is up to you)
-2xPPC/ERPPC (rest is up to you)
-4xLL
-2xAC20
Most of those are pretty great too but the K2 is one of the best mech variants in the game.
Might be cool I agree but I think they are using hard points to make variants more of a choice. If you could move hard points around at will then there wouldn’t be much difference between an Atlas with 6 energy hard points or an Awesome with 6 energy hard points. Yet an Atlas with 2 in each arm and 2 in the CT compared to an Awesome with 5 in the RT and one in the head is a big difference.
Agree with PG there are numerous viable builds for most mechs. I like the hardpoints system though some mechs are just badly designed… I do not think hardpoints are a cynical money grab either, as such a system was pioneered in MW4 (I would argue MW4 dd it better, MWO is trying to simplify a bit too much). It gives each mech chassis a strong flavour, something that would fundamentally disappear if you simply allowed free loadouts.
The 3 variants required to unlock the next tier of efficiencies to me is the moneygrab/grind inducer. However after paying for awhile is really not that bad… Just kind suboptimal. Where it’s hurting me right now is in grinding out two other dragon variants so I can max out my flame. The dragon is a bit of a dog…
Uh. After five days playing, I’m getting boring already. Not looking good for me.
I got bored quickly as well. I don’t know what it is that World of Tanks has, but MW:O definitely lacks it.
pg1
1734
Why did you guys get bored quickly? I’m genuinely curious. I look at MWO as a deathmatch based FPS. I played Quake for years and I can see myself doing the same in MWO. The main negatives for me are lack of competitive features (spectating, demos, private/custom servers, etc).
This is what actually annoys me about this game. Most of these are not Catapults. A Catapult is a chicken-legged, 65-ton 'mech that features a couple of big LRMs and some close-in weapons of choice. Otherwise, Mechs are just generic checkboxes of components with zero flavor or recognition factor. While I’m not a big fan of Clan tech, the whole “pod” idea of mixing and matching within specified limits was something I was always big on. I’m a grumpy old purist, though.
TL;DR version: when I see a Cat coming over the hill I expect to see 2 big LRMs and some close-in stuff, not a hodgepodge of overpowered gauss and AC20s.
Timex
1736
Patch today has made MASSIVE improvements to performance and netcode.
For me–and I’m not totally turned off yet, just ambivalent right now–it’s the fact that I see the game as a Mech game first and a competitive shooter second. My experience with BattleTech on the computer goes back to Crescent Hawks Inception and MechWarrior I, and what I remember from those games, as well as MechWarrior 2, 3, and 4, and MechCommander 1 and 2, are things like progression in 'mechs and tech, a nice economic element of balancing repairs and ammo costs as well as component costs, a variety of missions requiring a variety of 'mechs and loadouts, and a variety of mission maps. MWO really doesn’t offer much of that–it’s a solid FPS model, but it’s not BattleTech except in the fact that you’re in 'mechs. Again, that’s just my take–it doesn’t feel like a BattleTech game even as much as 3025 or whatever the EA game was called did.
What MWO is is exactly what you’ve described it as, but I’d rather just play CounterStrike if that’s what I want. For BattleTech, I want a lot more depth I think.
The canon K2 has a pair of PPCs and no LRM racks.
The canon K2 has a pair of PPCs and no LRM racks.
Timex
1740
Well, it seems like you are only talking about the single player campaigns from those games.
In terms of competitive online play, MWO is infinitely more deep than any of the preceding Mechwarrior titles.
