Greetings from the MechWarrior: Living Legends Team!
We know it has been a while since any development news has been released so we are pleased to end the dry spell with today’s glimpse into some of our ongoing development activities.
After several months of public beta release and analysis of metrics and playtest observations we have undertaken an extensive rebalancing effort. To support this, our programming team has developed a new approach to how balance is implemented in MechWarrior: Living Legends and have created new tools to allow our team to adjust balance in a logical and structured format.
New Balance Adjustment Script
Developed for use by internal development staff, this script allows for balance implementations to be quickly changed using multiplier values that apply to categories of weapons, sub-categories of weapons, vehicle armour values and component armour distribution.
Weapon Damage
Weapon damages have been completely refactored using CBT values as a base template. Additionally, within the balance code, weapons have been grouped via their class and sub-class (i.e. “Lasers” and “Beam Lasers”). Having this hierarchy in combination with the balance adjustment script allows us quickly set and playtest global changes to an entire weapon class.
Armour Values
Armour values for assets with MWLL have been refactored, again using CBT values as a base template. In this case, we have developed a formula for distributing the total armour value for a platform across its constituent components programmatically. As with the Weapon Damage system, each class of assets within MWLL has been categorised to allow quick changes across entire classes of vehicles for playtesting purposes. As an example, the script could be run to increase tracked armour values by 10% and instantly distribute that increased armour allocation across all member vehicles of that class.
Please note that although we are using CBT values as a starting template we have no intention of directly replicating the entirety of CBT balance tables. Beyond the obvious issues of trying to use a tabletop ruleset for a FPS combat game, we feel that the overall gameplay experience should be the guiding rule for the creation of a balance system.
We are undertaking internal testing to find a balance state for our next public beta release, but as with any complex game system we will likely need another round of feedback from the beta. However, with our more streamlined system, it will make the turn around much faster and make the addition of new assets much simpler and easier to balance relative to existing assets.
Thank You Again for Your Support of MechWarrior: Living Legends!
