35 replies to this topic

[HeroGhost]

The current leveling system is rather unbalanced. Level 15s can chew through level 0s and unless there are higher levels on their side, they are decimated. There is no balance to leveling up. In games like the battlefield series, you unlock new abilities but you can't select all of them all the time. There's the balance. In hawken it looks like you can just keep leveling up making you ever stronger without consequence. I believe this will severely dissuade new/casual players from playing if they run into high ranking mechs often, and it will dissuade people from starting new mechs when they are easily beaten by high levels.

I would suggest having a balance to the levels. that's my 2 cents.

[Toryne]

Player Skill > Mech Level this has been proven time and time again.

[AsianJoyKiller]

Unfortunately your 2 cents is faaar off the mark.
Levels, and the optimizations that come with them, don't go very far in making someone more powerful.

The real reason you see Lvl. 0s getting wrecked by high level mechs is pilot experience.
People who are higher level have had more time to get used to how the game works.
Even then, being Lvl. 20 only indicates that they might have the basics down.

Fact is, there are some of us who could hop on a Lvl. 0 and wreck face against a team of 20s and there are 20s who could fight Lvl. 0s and lose every time.

Skill > Level.

[HeroGhost]

Being higher level increases damage dealt and reduces damaged received. It matters. If two mechs face off blasting each other, the higher level will win every time. Sure you could dance around and out maneuver, but the point is that the mech is stronger. This makes it unbalanced. It shouldn't be a steady increase of strength, there should be a trade off to everything. This happens with items, but not optimizations.

Edited by HeroGhost, November 30 2012 - 01:39 PM.

[h0B0]

I get 9 extra hp from armor optimization.

The sub machine cannon deals 10 damager per hit.


If i can dodge your TOW i effectively reduce incoming damage by 180.

Skill>optimization.

[AsianJoyKiller]

HeroGhost, on November 30 2012 - 01:38 PM, said:

Being higher level increases damage dealt and reduces damaged received. It matters. If two mechs face off blasting each other, the higher level will win every time. Sure you could dance around and out maneuver, but the point is that the mech is stronger. This makes it unbalanced. It shouldn't be a steady increase of strength, there should be a trade off to everything. This happens with items, but not optimizations.

Run the numbers.
If you look at damage optimizations, you'll get something like 5% boost to damage.
The benefit of stacking health optimizations can be nullified in less than 1 second of automatic fire, or 1 hit from burst weaponry.

All the benefits that optimizations get aren't insurmountable by skill. In fact, the benefit they do give is most likely only going to be an advantage if the skill of two opposing pilots is almost exactly the same.

Edited by AsianJoyKiller, November 30 2012 - 01:42 PM.

[Akrium]

^ that...

[Sylhiri]

It's basically all in your mind. The higher numbers are making you think they are better then you because it's the mentality from other video games which is higher level = better. You'll actually do worse since you demoralize yourself if you keep thinking about the level difference unless you realize that levels mean nothing.

If someone gave you a level 20 mech right now you would do just as well against people you have fought before previously.

Edited by Sylhiri, November 30 2012 - 01:52 PM.

[ReachH]

The most overbearing optimizations are actually the mobility ones. Especially if your mech has a TOW.

[AsianJoyKiller]

ReachH, on November 30 2012 - 09:21 PM, said:

The most overbearing optimizations are actually the mobility ones. Especially if your mech has a TOW.

Someone in our Mumble was doing the math, and one of the mobility optimizations makes you go a whopping 2 miles per hour faster...

[Etan]

I thought the speed in game was meters per second_

[AsianJoyKiller]

Etan, on December 01 2012 - 02:27 AM, said:

I thought the speed in game was meters per second_

And we, of course, lack any sort of process that might allow us to convert units from metric to imperial.

On that extremely sarcastic note, I must have mis-remembered the number he gave, because a meter is a little over 3 feet.

[NBShoot_me]

Then maybe the DEVs could have Hawken run the K:D ratio (or some sort effectiveness metric) in the background and pair people up with others in the same "skill" bracket for MM induced games.  When using the server browser once it is added back in, I'd leave the choice entirely up to the player.

EDIT: but yes, you see a bunch of high lvl mechs against a bunch of 0 to low lvl mechs, they generally do chew through them with ease.

Edited by NBShoot_me, December 01 2012 - 12:55 PM.

[ReachH]

AsianJoyKiller, on November 30 2012 - 10:07 PM, said:

ReachH, on November 30 2012 - 09:21 PM, said:

The most overbearing optimizations are actually the mobility ones. Especially if your mech has a TOW.

Someone in our Mumble was doing the math, and one of the mobility optimizations makes you go a whopping 2 miles per hour faster...

Talking more of the -seconds of dodging and such, feels a lot different. And you do notice the final +1m/s move speed when you are sneaking around ^^

But if your nerd says the difference is only 2 mph, well I guess that's a lot then.

[NBShoot_me]

2^10 MPH_

[Akrium]

NBShoot_me, on December 01 2012 - 12:54 PM, said:

Then maybe the DEVs could have Hawken run the K:D ratio (or some sort effectiveness metric) in the background and pair people up with others in the same "skill" bracket for MM induced games.  When using the server browser once it is added back in, I'd leave the choice entirely up to the player.

EDIT: but yes, you see a bunch of high lvl mechs against a bunch of 0 to low lvl mechs, they generally do chew through them with ease.

Adv player vs Adv player will tend to have low k:d because they will kill each other fairly often back and forth. So it cannot be based on k:d at all as it turns out. You can have stat padding newbies with 8:1 k:d and pros w/ 2:1... kinda silly huh

[NBShoot_me]

Akrium, on December 01 2012 - 02:09 PM, said:

NBShoot_me, on December 01 2012 - 12:54 PM, said:

Then maybe the DEVs could have Hawken run the K:D ratio (or some sort effectiveness metric) in the background and pair people up with others in the same "skill" bracket for MM induced games.  When using the server browser once it is added back in, I'd leave the choice entirely up to the player.

EDIT: but yes, you see a bunch of high lvl mechs against a bunch of 0 to low lvl mechs, they generally do chew through them with ease.

Adv player vs Adv player will tend to have low k:d because they will kill each other fairly often back and forth. So it cannot be based on k:d at all as it turns out. You can have stat padding newbies with 8:1 k:d and pros w/ 2:1... kinda silly huh

I'm just throwing one possible way out there, that's all.

Like I said, "or some sort of effectiveness metric".  I'm not sure what the Hawken team is actually going to be keeping track of.  But, it could be anything from dmg dealt in-game, or points could be accumulated on a progressive scale (higher lvl mechs than the one being used worth more) per mech killed.  Factor in total in-game time_  Kills per minute / deaths per minute, the sky is the limit.  I'm sure someone could come up with a valid way to determine roughly the skill level of a given player.

Also, if a newbie wants to pad his/her stats, wouldn't MM just start throwing that person in with the "elites"_

EDIT: Or, the Hawken team could do what some other F2P people have done, once you reach a certain (skill) level, killing the newbies doesn't really net you much if any XP / credits.

Edited by NBShoot_me, December 01 2012 - 02:29 PM.

[Subdivision]

Player/mech balance is a complex calculation that takes into account a large number of factors that have been generated by the game. This can include stuff like K:D, level of mech, mech mastery, time in game, win/loss ratio. It's not taken off one single stat but as everyone here has stated, skill is far superior to level/optimisation. A player's skill can not be measured accurately by the game without a large amounts of data to process but even then it can be way off. When Open beta (more players on all the servers) hits, then the games should even out a bit more.

[DarkPulse]

NBShoot_me, on December 01 2012 - 12:54 PM, said:

Then maybe the DEVs could have Hawken run the K:D ratio (or some sort effectiveness metric) in the background and pair people up with others in the same "skill" bracket for MM induced games.  When using the server browser once it is added back in, I'd leave the choice entirely up to the player.

EDIT: but yes, you see a bunch of high lvl mechs against a bunch of 0 to low lvl mechs, they generally do chew through them with ease.

No, because pilot skill will mean that a L0 pilot who is good will stomp a L20 who is average. The L20s have boosts, but hardly huge ones (in fact, most feel it's insignificant for the most part compared to CB2 and earlier).

Also, K/D is a horrible metric to judge by. There are good players out there who aren't K/D Beasts (not to be confused with KGBeast) and it gives a disproportionate advantage solely on killing power. Better metrics would be XP/Minute, Mech Mastery scores, and so on.

[AsianJoyKiller]

ReachH, on December 01 2012 - 01:06 PM, said:

But if your nerd says the difference is only 2 mph, well I guess that's a lot then.

After checking the optimizations, the best increase you can manage is about 2 meters per second faster, which works out to just about 6.5 feet per second faster.
6.5 feet per second = 4.4 miles per hour.

That's appreciable when your walking at 3 mph and a jogger passes your at 8 mph.
But with the walking speed on the mechs being faster than a human could even run, and their large scale, that 4.4 mph makes little difference.