Rock-Paper-Scissors

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

I'm not sure how I feel about it.  Is it possible at some point that we have too many assets at our disposal vs the number of players that a server can support?  What I mean is that I fear the situation where the game starts to just become reactionary in that every side picks the best counter to what the other team is fielding.  Like it or not there is an RPS element to this game and I definitely don't want it to devolve to a situation where teams are somewhat funneled into picking rock because the other team has scissors.
 
Am I being hyper-sensitive? Is this the ultimate direction the game should go?  Or should every asset have some chance at success against every other asset?  This kind of goes to the heart of balance in this game.  I'd prefer to see assets that are really good at one thing have their specialty reined in and their diversity increased.  Long toms really good at crushing assault mechs?  Take away some of the dps from the artillery and give them a couple of medium lasers.  AA really good at crushing aircraft?  Drop their damage passed 1000m and give them a cluster of small lasers or some machine guns.
 
I love the combined arms theme but I'm afraid of the boring predictablity of just grabbing the perfect asset as a counter and kissing your ass goodbye whenever you see your own counter headed your way.  This will only increase imo as the number of different assets begins to really outstrip the number of available players per server.  Thoughts?

[Grimnitemare]

to each their own.... each person has their own playing style.... If I had a joystick I would probably fly alot.... who knows... I think there need to be more assets just my .02

[CHHs Cyan]

i know what you mean , the server's seem to go thru an arms race, everyone startes with lights, so people want heavy guns like ac-20 or HG to pop em, then people want something with some extra damage at range to hit the mediums, then people are rich to get assaults so to defeat them everyone gets lrm boats because their slow, then people go back to lights to rush the lrm boats , and the cycle repeats

personally i find assaults have no real place in the game, they are to slow to defend agenst lrm boats or even light -medium mechs, and most of the heavys thanathos and novacat are better than most of the assaults

i joined a game with 10mins to spare ,got an lrm puma and orbited an atlas at 400m with 100kmph transversal and killed him with 4 vollys of my lrms, while taking no damage

[Grimnitemare]

When they add the ability for people to outfit their mechs how they want you will see a very different game. Now when you see a mech you have a good idea what its capable of.  Later you will just never know whats on something until it knocks you down......

[BraylonCWM]

When they add the ability for people to outfit their mechs how they want you will see a very different game. Now when you see a mech you have a good idea what its capable of.  Later you will just never know whats on something until it knocks you down......

QFT

and the MK2 B is the baddest assault asset eva!

[SquareSphere }12thVR{]

I've always though assaults as the tip of the spear, they're what can pierce a hardened defense line but the rest of the team needs to take advantage of the target fixation that teams have when assaults pop up.

As far as the R/P/S vs asset and players.  It's a interesting theory and has plenty of valid points.  However I view it semi differently now.  it's R/P/S based on players.  You have Specialists, Neophytes, and Versatiles.

Back to the ground.  Yes you're always gonna have the arms race cycle except in organized play.  It's always good to have a fast reaction force to take out toms/boats and for flanking, but at the same time the need for Assaults and heavies are needed to actually break a line.

Specialist are what make up the bulk of the players I think.  That's not to say they play only one style just that the majority of their skill in in one area, they maybe proficient in others.

Neophytes are people still learning, that's not to say they're only noobies, they could be people trying to branch out and trying out the other options too.  They might not even be trying to "win" but focus rather on learning something new.  These people eventually end up in the Specialist or Versatiles.

Versatiles Very few of these, vet players that can do it all and often switch roles and vehicles to adapt to the changing battlefield.

Going back to the RPS things. If the bulk of my team are Rock (mech) Specialist, then they should have no problem taking out Scissors (tanks).  Probably is that it's not about always Rock vs Scissors, most games are people going Rock against Rock.  The winner being the one who can "throw Rock harder".  Of course not everyone on the team is gonna pick Paper (air assets) to get over the rock, so it falls on Versatles to grab them to "soften" the enemy Rock.

problem right now is two fold,

1) Scissors (AA tanks) rip through Paper, it's not uncommon to see 1 AA tank lock down 2-3 air assets by themselves
2) There's not many Versatles, or Air Specialists.

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

IHMO the biggest problem is what happen in Beta 0.2.0 release.
First of all the Aero controls were changed... and they were changed to the level where bomb-aces had to learn everything from very beginning. Few of them gave up and focused on Mechs (I was one of them... used to be death with the wings, now I avoid Aeros as much as I can - prefer even VTOLs over Aeros which was unthinkable for me at the 0.1.0)
Secondly the AA units become a hell. Single cheapest AA tank (that is partisan) can shred through heaviest ASF in like... 5 seconds? While staying on passive it can destroy any Shiva without getting even locked. The price difference between these two is huge - 47 910 vs 119 300 - so I can't get how it is that Aeros doesn't stay even slightest chance against AA... even in the cases when 2 of them try to take down a single partisan.

When these two are combined - suddenly you end up with no ASF pilots. And those who try are just praying so that noone would take any AA-capable unit.

So for now we have Rock-Paper.

[Snowball]

Honestly I loved the air/anti-air dynamic pre 2.0.  I know tons of people felt that AA was underpowered, but it really wasn't.  The partisan was fine at it, provided you could aim, and the Harasser C was exceptional.  I think what most people didn't realize was that Parti's were great at Anti-VTOL and the Harassers C was great at Anti-Aero.  It was pretty damn well balanced, in my opinion, as there were viable air assets, and there were AA assets in place that ensured flyers weren't to OP.

And to some of the earlier flyers who were complaining about the Harasser C being OP because it could sometimes one-shot aeros, it was a harasser for pete's sake.  You could sneeze at it and it'd explode, it was extremely unstable, and it had no extra ammo.  VTOL's who could stay mobile were absolute death to Harassers, and it's pretty hard to land a LtGauss shot when you're running like hell.

[DFDelta]

Honestly I loved the air/anti-air dynamic pre 2.0.  I know tons of people felt that AA was underpowered, but it really wasn't.  The partisan was fine at it, provided you could aim, and the Harasser C was exceptional.  I think what most people didn't realize was that Parti's were great at Anti-VTOL and the Harassers C was great at Anti-Aero.  It was pretty damn well balanced, in my opinion, as there were viable air assets, and there were AA assets in place that ensured flyers weren't to OP.

And to some of the earlier flyers who were complaining about the Harasser C being OP because it could sometimes one-shot aeros, it was a harasser for pete's sake.  You could sneeze at it and it'd explode, it was extremely unstable, and it had no extra ammo.  VTOL's who could stay mobile were absolute death to Harassers, and it's pretty hard to land a LtGauss shot when you're running like hell.

True, the worst part about aeros was that they kept warping all over the place 90% off the time, making it nearly impossible to hit them.
The rare cases where they didn't warp around it was absolutely possible to kill them with a Parti Prime.
Well, I'm hoping for a small AA damage and (especially) range reduction so it is possible again to bring up some ASFs

[CHHs Cyan]

i think the only issue with 1.0 aerial assets was the crysis net code and how HPB's were affected by it

i remember shooting an aero with a uac-20, im sure i couldnt do that now, tbh i have only killed one aero since 2.0

[Storm490]

Right now there is definitly a rps feel,  which is natural.  People will gravitate to a threats counter.  But as players become better and more adjusted things will change.  For instance I uses to go lrm to attack heavies or assault.  Now I go either harrasser prime or light because I enjoy the speed and hit and run tactics and most of the time I can win or hurt then enough to make em turn tail.  I can really hurt with a ba gainer everything but partisan as well.  People just need time to settle in.  Give it a little  time and it will be fine.

[Stormin']

Although I can appreciate the intended gameplay behind RPS, I think at this stage we have yet to see a truly balanced application of it.  I would say we currently have a Nail / Hammer / Corkscrew / Spatula kind of thing going.

I think perhaps the best approach would be to provide a primary / secondary functionality in terms of effectiveness, in RPS overall design, but not dedicating one's role entirely to being the anti-whatever of a specific opponent.  Each asset should be at least poorly effective at everything, moderately effective at many things, and very effective at specific things.  You should not be in a position where you simply cannot defend yourself against anything in particular (by class, not by loadout), as that simply isn't fun.

[Friedrich Psitalon]

I think perhaps the best approach would be to provide a primary / secondary functionality in terms of effectiveness, in RPS overall design, but not dedicating one's role entirely to being the anti-whatever of a specific opponent.  Each asset should be at least poorly effective at everything, moderately effective at many things, and very effective at specific things.  You should not be in a position where you simply cannot defend yourself against anything in particular (by class, not by loadout), as that simply isn't fun.

Respectfully, I couldn't disagree more with this idea. I think that's exactly the position you should be in - and right now, in several cases, that's so. This isn't a solo-fighter game. It's a team combat engine, and it should reflect such. The fun in this game is not and was never intended to be "solo fun." That's like complaining that Command and Conquer doesn't have a good FPS experience. MW:LL is a team combat game, and if you play it, seek your fun from the team experience - or accept that it will be "less fun." My Command Atlas is a nightmare for mediums, terrifying for heavies, and frightening to assaults. As long as lights aren't stupid, I'm an obstacle they have to slide past and then kill from behind.

Two or three  Battle Armor, on the other hand, are my death incarnate. I have to scream "MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY" on Vent the moment I see them on radar, because I know once they get underfoot there's not a damn thing I can do. And it should be that way. My buddy in the flamer Hollander laughs at me and grinds up the BA, and then shrieks for my help when a Novacat or a Thanatos comes over the line. We both scream bloody murder and go looking for our Anti-Air buddies when that damnable VTOL gets perfectly over top of us, because god knows I can't look straight up and he can't shoot high enough either.

What would the point be if I had a way to deal with the BA? What good would the AA tank be if we could deal with that VTOL?

Battletech has always been a squad combat game. If you're good at one thing, you should be terrible at another. If you're GREAT at one thing - like the Atlas B - you should be utterly impotent at another. If you want a "Jack of All Trades" mech there's some out there. But the idea that a mech should be able to respond to everything smacks of the old Druids of Everquest or the Dominixes of EVE - beloved by many players specifically because they allow them to do something the game never intended: operate in a highly effective manner alone. MW:LL isn't an MMO, but it IS a team game, and thus operating alone should not be anywhere near as effective as operating with a team.

MW:LL is not a solo-play game. No one should have the capability to do so in all situations. Fly with a team and lean on each other, or fly alone and die when your counter arrives.

[Infinite o0o]

agreed, everything has its role on the battlefield, and if you want to win your team has to field a wide variety of units to deal with the changing cobat environment. Also, saying that this game has turned into R/P/S style game play, well, that's oversimplifying the issue, since there is always a tactic/counter-tactic to every situation in the game, which means that you don't just have 3 R/P/S options, but the whole alphabet, and on top of that the situation isn't always as simple as "this unit beats that unit", when you throw organized fire and manuver tactics to the list you up end that "balance". So essentially the situation is actually more like, "the more organized and informed side" beats "the less organized, less informed side".

[Stormin']

...

I don't think I mentioned once that I advocated solo play.  Your entire rant appears to be based on this assumption.  I said that most units should be able to at least respond to a threat, even if they are poorly effective at it.  I don't see how that removes the team play element, especially to the extremes you have posted here.  I just don't agree that artificial limits be imposed to enforce RPS.

As far as dealing with BA or other troublesome assets, there are many things that we don't have that theoretically would be included...additional camera angles, anti-personnel pods, melee options, etc.  The complete inability to deal with a threat is not part of Battletech as far as I understand it (except in obviously extreme differences); in fact, most stock loadouts include a range of weapons designed to deal with a range of threats.  Again, it may not be the most effective or perhaps not very effective at all, but at least they are generally able to attempt a defense or make-shift offense.

Thankfully, my opinions are my own and don't affect your play experience.