I couldn't disagree more. The game is largely well balanced, most definitely the most balanced and working state it has been since I began playing. There are a few sore spots in the balance no doubt about that. To say that there is a lot to be changed is a complete exaggeration.
As has been said, there needs to be a client patch before much can or should be changed.
Being able to deploy new versions of the game to the user base and cleaning up the back end is clearly their top priority. I am very glad that is the case because those two things will make development of the game much more stream lined.
It's not a few things. It's a lot of things which are not small deal, especially considering Reloaded's lack of touch and how simple band-aids will not instantly fix the underlying problems and how much time they need to even change the smallest of things.
On top of my head:
Weapons:
- Hawkins & AM-SAR relation
- TOW's omnipotency, Saare and Pred mines' scaling (or the lack of) on practically missed shots
- Breacher & T32 & EOC relation (Breacher steps on T32's toes, the EOC is overshadowed by both former weapons in function)
- Flak & Miniflak relation with the current boost delay mechanic, the Miniflak can't definitely outdamage the Flak unless you compromise a lot of your movement as a Scout for 1.5 seconds (of course, the TOW does most of the lifting so it's not that bad).
- Sabot & KE-Sabot relation, it takes 9 seconds for KE-Sabot to start outdamaging the Sabot, that's a long time for a weapon that's DPS oriented to outdamage a weapon that's burst oriented. The KE-sabot is also worse in heat efficiency, which makes no sense as it's got lower damage and to maximize its potential, it has to be chained, an effect that's present in other weapons in game. KE-Sabot has other qualities to it, such as the smaller spread outside of scope so I'll let this pass as a minor case.
- Hellfires in general, the mechs they're on would be better off with almost any other weapon, how'd you think that the GL, a slow projectile, reaches the target faster at 80 meters than a Hellfire missile? That's even before taking into account the lock-on time.
- Spread being based on pitch and yaw instead of pitch/yaw and roll, affects high spread weapons critically. It does not make sense mechanically, unless the barrels are square-shaped.
- Primary projectile weapons and their risk/reward compared to hitscan
- PPA and how it makes the Incin too self-synergistic at a low effort, occasionally held down by lag bugs
Internals:
Is Evasive Device at 2 slots anywhere in power as Deflectors, Extractor or Fuel Converter? The power of the slot investment on certain internals does not reflect the power of the more used internals, which makes the game bland as there are much less choices. Certain internals such as the Composite Armor, Fuel Converter act as effective crutches for people challenged in surviving, killing, fuel management and positioning, which all should be core skills in Hawken and not to be made any easier at a low internal cost. The AC is an internal that too effectively decides an encounter against non-hitscan, non-400m/s, non-remote-detonatable weaponry, which further makes the risk/reward of these projectile weapons look odd in the context of arena shooters which usually reward direct hit projectiles.
Items:
Portable Scanner, an item so cancerous that it's realized even at lower tier games before players have even reached level 30.
The EMP and Orb have become the most important items, while the other items are mostly niche for some very specific purposes. The stock item system coupled with the low respawn effectively rewards dying. I feel this is a dead horse and everyone knows that the item system is still flawed at the moment.
I would go on, but I have better things to do and I feel this is not going to be fruitful, I will not change my opinion and probably neither will you. If I'm right, the devs couldn't fix everything even if they wanted to. If you're right, well, good for the devs I suppose? Less work and more wondering why this game doesn't get the player numbers it deserves and why the weapons feel so cheap and bland. Maybe more challenge coins, T-shirts and mediocre servers will cure it?
Overall the balance is kind of there because it's in great part a community effort and it could be worse, a lot worse. Not all people play the most effective and the most powerful mechs, but want to play different for the sake of differency is the only reason we're not playing with an armada of the most overpowered mechs with portable scanners thrown around every corner every single game. Hawken, in my opinion, is one hell of a mess at balancing with choices that don't make sense either with numerical analysis or with feel, considering how long it has been in development. Just because the devs pulled a Nth Mulligan with the values and it proved to be kind of better than the last iterations, does not mean the game is well balanced. But that's most class based shooters in a nutshell.