Rock-Paper-Scissors

[rat-morningstar]

what's stopping you from picking a "jack of all trades" mech?

not everything needs to be able to deal with every threat

[Friedrich Psitalon]

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.

To me, these two statements are contradictory, which was the purpose of my "rant." Disagreeing with your position, by the way, does not make my post invalid or a "rant."

The ability to respond in ANY way to EVERY threat is inherently solo-play-promoting, which is precisely what I was trying to explain in my entirely rant-free post. If people can respond to every variety of threat - even if non-ideally - they have no encouragement to seek the aid of others. As a result, you encourage solo play. Luckily, the "Jack of all" mechs in MW:LL tend to perform poorly against their specialized brethren and so tend to receive little time - and thus, solo-encouraging mechs and their attendant playstyles tend to wither.

[Stormin']

Disagreeing with your position, by the way, does not make my post invalid or a "rant."

I called it a rant because you took something I didn't say, stated it was my position, then forced it to an extreme.

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

Good grief.  Where did this solo thing come from?  This isn't an MMOG where you can hang out in the corner of a world and farm mobs for xp.  Anyone going it solo in any asset is going to get owned in this game .  I think fear of a solo MWLL is overrated.  I'm just advocating against the extreme RPS possibility that the fights a player wins and loses gets decided at the mechhangar when he chooses a vehicle.  Player skill ought to be invovled not just by picking the right targets and running from the wrong ones but also be allowed to have some impact no matter which assets are on the battlefield.  Right now there are certain pairings in this game where one unit is totally useless.

I suppose this is a matter to be sorted by details instead of as a broad policy because I can tell we are approaching this topic from extreme views instead of perhaps the individual problematic units themselves.  This is definitely a balance issue to be viewed on a continuum.
I think most of the problems people are having with balance in this game is that certain units are so highly specialized to the point where their prey feel basically helpless against them.  On the other side of the coin the experienced vets playing these units get bored because of how easy it is to kill their prey.   LTs, AA, LRMboats to name a few. This is not going to be solved by simply neutering their effectiveness.  A possible solution is to give them some additional options.
 
Highly specialized units are not only too effective against their targets they are also exceedingly one dimensional and will quickly become boring to the experienced player.  This needs to be addressed in some fashion.  Sure we can just pick another asset but we do want every asset to be enjoyable and complex.

[[MPB]OM_Sannyasi]

we could always implement a hangman game mode too

[Sumptin]

Good grief.  Where did this solo thing come from?  This isn't an MMOG where you can hang out in the corner of a world and farm mobs for xp.  Anyone going it solo in any asset is going to get owned in this game .  I think fear of a solo MWLL is overrated.  I'm just advocating against the extreme RPS possibility that the fights a player wins and loses gets decided at the mechhangar when he chooses a vehicle.  Player skill ought to be invovled not just by picking the right targets and running from the wrong ones but also be allowed to have some impact no matter which assets are on the battlefield.  Right now there are certain pairings in this game where one unit is totally useless.

I suppose this is a matter to be sorted by details instead of as a broad policy because I can tell we are approaching this topic from extreme views instead of perhaps the individual problematic units themselves.  This is definitely a balance issue to be viewed on a continuum.
I think most of the problems people are having with balance in this game is that certain units are so highly specialized to the point where their prey feel basically helpless against them.  On the other side of the coin the experienced vets playing these units get bored because of how easy it is to kill their prey.   LTs, AA, LRMboats to name a few. This is not going to be solved by simply neutering their effectiveness.  A possible solution is to give them some additional options.
 
Highly specialized units are not only too effective against their targets they are also exceedingly one dimensional and will quickly become boring to the experienced player.  This needs to be addressed in some fashion.  Sure we can just pick another asset but we do want every asset to be enjoyable and complex.

Good post, but I think I see it a bit differently than yourself.

Each Mech seems to have a "Jack of all trades" variant. It's strength is exactly what you're asking for, the ability to address a wide range of threats. In return, it's not exceedingly good at any one style. You can grab the Vulture with 4xLRM20's but you'll be easy prey to a small, fast brawler. I personally find the choice very strategic, as I look at what my team is primarily fielding (and the level of teamwork) before I pick a variant. I also *try* to stick near other Mechs that compliment my strengths.

- Bogeyman

[Stormin']

I'm pretty sure he is not talking about variants.  If you go out in a specialized variant, you are obviously giving up versatility for more dedicated tonnage.  That is to be expected and I'm sure we will see far more of it when customization is available.

The point is making one class the anti-weapon of another class (or in some cases, chassis).  If one class cannot engage another simply due to a forced limitation, RPS gameplay is enforced rather than encouraged.  I tend to give preference to end-user in this regard, as long as it does not break the overall game mechanic or allow over-exploitation of intended use.

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

I may just have to temper my view a bit.  This is a game where every niche is represented by a unique asset.  It is going to follow naturally from this design choice that certain assets act as near perfect counterpoints to some other unit and I'm not sure you can get away from that without watering down the niches.  It's not terribly prohibitive in the current gameplay modes to have to get a different machine if you are up against a force that is your counter.
 
I think where this may be more of an issue is in a No respawn format.  It would suck to be at a strong disadvantage simply because you randomly chose a combined forces composition that put you at a disadvantage to the chosen force of the other team.  If you chose poorly you may eat shit through know real fault of your own skill.
 
The game is fairly RPS by design and as a team most individual disadvantages should be surrmountable. 

[4204ME]

Snowball sir I would like to smack the shit out of you over the harraser C balanced coment in 1.0.

I like the rock paper siscors play of this game. If you rape me with your partison I will kill you with my madcat. You smash me with your atlas and I BA you to death. Then some asshat on my team kills us both with a LT. good times.

[(TLL)KitLightning]

 

[Snowball]

Snowball sir I would like to smack the shit out of you over the harraser C balanced coment in 1.0.

Dohoho 

I think the reason why the Harasser C did seem so imbalanced was because gameplay at that point in the mod was focused so heavily on camping, both for lack of an effective camp-breaker weapon, and because of the relative inexperience of the player base as a whole.  You didn't have constantly changing lines of battle, so the Harasser pilot (i.e. me) could just sit comfortably in the same spot and ignore everything on the ground, focusing entirely on the sky.  Making a Harasser C scoot around makes it absolutely impossible for it to hit anything that stays fairly mobile, and flowing battle lines do just that.  I'm really interested to see what the next AA/Aero balance implementation is like, as I love friendly flyers, but I hate enemy flyers with a passion.

[xInVicTuSx]

If you chose poorly you may eat shit through know real fault of your own skill.

Wrong. Unless you are backed up in your own base you can make anything work, brawler, support boat, anything. It ALL comes down to patience, molding the situation and terrain to your advantage and waiting for allies to move ahead (or in the case of most games go forward anyways and have an escape route planned cause your fnckin team wont budge.) As a missile mech whether it be a Vulture or a Catapult I am constantly moving forward, only time I stop is when i see a clear target and stop to destroy it before moving on. As a brawler sometimes you have to endure 5 boring minutes in the destroyed hangers on marshes before one of the boats decides to get close. As the game stands now there really is little disadvantage to anything... why? Because you can wait long enough to use your asset correctly. This will not be the case in capture mode, there is a push to gain ground and capture points, there is also a push to stand ground and not run away when defending.

In these situations I want a balanced mech more than anything because support will not always be available (I'm guessing these will be big maps with MULTIPLE capture points at once so everyone has to fan out.) When you can't just throw teammates at targets (which is somehow a more leet tactic?) you will have to figure it out quick and by yourself, this is where I my fun from. Until then there is no cause to whine because there is no push in the current game mode, if you're in a balanced mech and you come across a boat, get close and plink away at him, if hes a brawler back pedal and use your one missile rack and LL to leg him perhaps.

The point is I like to solo, and I hate when people whine about it because they want me in some asset standing there to nuke someone when THEY get in trouble, I don't mind working as a team, but if no one is going take the damn hill I'll do it myself FFS. If the balanced solo type mechs are nerfed cause someone is afraid they will "own all" well I'm sorry but l2p.
In conclusion I don't like Rock-Paper-Scissors heavy mechanics, thus why I don't play many MMOs.

Note: This was not a rant against you Blhurr just a rant in general on rock paper scissors gameplay.

[Flyingdebris]

I'm in favor of balance by degrees over flat out rock paper scissors.

a good comparison would be starcraft style vs total annihilation style

Starcraft style, just about everything has a designated hard counter to the point where it doesn't feel so much like a space marine or zerg so much as a chess pieces.

Total annihilation style however, instead of hard designated counters it pretty much left things far more gray.  Sure those tanks would not be very good vs aircraft, but you want, they could still try and manage to down a few.

 The TA approach i found felt more natural and less arbitrarily gamey.  And in the case of having a mechlab which will blur the roles of all sorts of vehicles considerably, i believe that we'll see more TA style balancing than starcraft style as a natural  result

[CHHš Sturmadler]

The TA approach i found felt more natural and less arbitrarily gamey.  And in the case of having a mechlab which will blur the roles of all sorts of vehicles considerably, i believe that we'll see more TA style balancing than starcraft style as a natural  result

QFT

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

The TA approach i found felt more natural and less arbitrarily gamey.  And in the case of having a mechlab which will blur the roles of all sorts of vehicles considerably, i believe that we'll see more TA style balancing than starcraft style as a natural  result

Yep, exactly. If something is natural counter to something else than it should be this way, but the units shouldn't be deliberatively created for rock paper scissors rule. Lucky in MW games you have mechlab, so people gonna create counters to other units naturally, but at this point everything seems t be quite fine as well