Posted 07 August 2018 - 10:18 AM

Balance Podcast - Aug 2018:

Opening comms for game balance:

Podcast Summary:



Disscussion Venues:

• The Official Forums the best place to relay any type of feedback for this discussion. Not Reddit or Twitter.

• With the release of the podcast we will be opening up a forum thread to start the overall discussion.

• For things such as balance there are multiple eyes involved in the decision making process that monitor the forums that will not see various Twitter / Reddit threads.

• If you have an opinion, posting in the forums ensures the most amount of internal eyes see the discussion.



PTS:

• PTS stands for Public TEST Server. Heavy emphasis on the word test.

• PTS's primary purpose is for testing, feedback, and data collection.

• The values that are put up on PTS are never what are considered final "release state" values.

• Values tested on PTS are often on the high spectrum of values that are under investigation for changes. And are often set to monitor for breakpoints, player behavior, and in game behavior under the testing values.



Balance:

• Focused balance passes. Not global balance passes.

• Current focus is on the 94 efficient alpha and the discrepancy between Clan and IS laser vomit performance against one another.

• Just because that is our core focus does not make it our sole focus.

• Intent is not to smash the Clans down, we know that addressing certain things on the Clan side it will put other things under the microscope.

• One instance of this is Inner Sphere defensive quirks which will come under scrutiny if we where to move forward with some of the things tested in PTS.

• Its not about attacking any individual builds so much as what is around that can effectively counterplay around the heavy performers.

• We know that the skilled players will always find a way to get similar performance out of the high performing 'Mechs with slight loadout alterations. This is fine.

• The example of a Deathstrike simply moving over to 3 Large Lasers Plus Gauss and Medium lasers getting the same kind of performance is not seen as undesired on our end as that performance becomes more contingent on playing into a certain role.

• Yes, the Deathstrike with 3 Large Lasers got better at specifically long range engagements, but it did so at the cost of its overall speed, its sustained heat efficiency, and its overall per-alpha damage output. All of which came down. And all of which makes it more venerable to other types of play styles that have more close range sustainability compared to the current builds you typically see it bring on live.

• One of the core balance points that has to be under observation in MWO is the spread between 20 to 100 ton 'Mechs and the capabilities that they bring to the table.

• Global weapon increases tend to favor the heavier classes of 'Mechs. Buffs to AC/20's and Gauss rifles would buff Heavy and Assault 'Mechs, but would not benefit any 'Mech under 50 tons which can lead to further widening of the divide between the capabilities of 'Mechs throughout the 'Mech roster.

• Lasers aren't being targeted because they are the considered the highest performers so much that there is a clear rift in viability of energy centric load-outs between the IS and the Clan side.

• It has never been the intention of MWO online to have Time to Kill in a state where you can destroy a mech in only a handful of shots.

• Will not be blindly balancing upwards to meet Clan Laser vomit without proper give/take and taking into consideration all other areas of balance.

• While upwards trajectories always sound good, there are consequences that would massively disrupt other states of play within the game. Such as massively buffing armor to compete against higher alphas out of heavy and assault 'Mechs, but then light on light mech gameplay would take forever to whittle through all of the armor with low weapon counts and high armor values.

• Any change that comes from PTS will not be a one sided change. We will be examining other attributes from both sides of the faction spectrum.

• Engine de-sync did what it was designed to do.

• Engine de-sync was never designed to replicate the old 'Mech mastery system, but replace the baseline attributes prior to skill investment. (So a 'Mech with zero experience under the older system.)

• Some Heavies and Assaults on a case by case level will be looked into for mobility increases.

• Depending on what we ultimately settle on for laser changes, lights and mediums could be given corrective quirks to ensure that they don't move too far from their current state.



LRMs:

• Another core point we balance against is the choices within the 'Mechlab. We do not want there to be dead weight within the 'Mechlab.

• Prior to the velocity buffs the LRMs where a sub par weapon system at most levels of play. And even with the most recent buffs to the weapon system, they are still a fairly sub-par weapon system over the general lineup.

• With buffs to the baseline equipment, the ease of use and the force multipliers have come under the microscope.

• Coming August patch, we will be hitting the ease of use of the weapon as well as a number of the force multipliers for the weapon. Including:

o Around a 50% tightening of the weapon lock angle.

o Artemis boosts to lock on times and tracking removed. For LRM's it will only tighten the spread on the missile launchers.

o NARC seeing a 100% increase in cooldown.

o ECM getting a range boost.

• Open to further changes post August patch provided those changes are not made with the intent to simply remove the weapon from the overall weapon roster.

• Weapon system changes never off the table as a discussion point, but it is not something that we can definitively state.



Coolshots

• Changes coming to cool shots in the August patch.

• The 14 heat provided by cool shots applied to the 'Mech over a 3 second duration rather then a single second duration.

• Not opposed to changing the way that cool shots operate within the game, but any change has to account for them existing and having a place in the overall lineup.



Future PTS'

• Looking into doing another PTS centered around baseline heat thresholds and dissipation rates based on community proposals.

• Looking to get it out fairly quickly but nothing definitive yet.



- Thanks Daeron/Phil of NGNG for getting this doneOkay folks, after running 2 PTS builds and monitoring data and feedback, you may have seen that we are not using the numbers that were used with either of the builds. That doesn’t mean that the general direction was off target, just that the numbers used to get targeted data were both extreme and placed in areas that might not get us what we need.I’d like to take a moment to address what exactly is going on with balance. These initial PTSs were about what I addressed in my initial balance post; the high alpha damage and subsequently the high Clan ‘laser vomit’ happening in the game. It is this focus that we’ve been working on in these initial PTS builds (known as PTS 1.0 and PTS 1.1).The change to balance concerning the alpha/laser issue was in the right direction, but the numbers used were of concern and there are other factors that must come into play if we do move in this direction. The 94 alpha that we are very concerned about cannot be reduced in a significant way without these extreme numbers. That being said, having to go to these extreme values is causing a net change that is not favorable both internally and publicly which means that we will be looking at other avenues to address the situation. We may use numbers from the PTS that reduce this 94 alpha to something like 90 (EXAMPLE NUMBER ONLY) instead of trying to get it to 80 or some other drastic number. After that change is made, we will be looking at other possible means to go from the example 90 to something lower.All of that being said, we are also very aware of what will need to be done to IS armor quirks, light/med energy quirks, assault level agility quirks, bringing lower performing weapons upward etc.Below is a TL;DR of the podcast and what was discussed and what we’re looking at in terms of dealing with the issues above as well as changes that we will be addressing in the near future. Chris and myself will be monitoring this thread continually and will be commenting when and where we can. Much like the current FP feedback thread going on over here , I want to make sure the discussion is casual/productive and less ‘corporate’.We understand there’s a lot of passion behind what you will be commenting on but remember to keep it civil. Posting nothing but salt will get your post moderated and your voice will be lost in the conversation/discussion that this thread is to serve.