625 replies to this topic

[Jakob Knight]

Joseph Mallan, on 11 December 2013 - 11:05 AM, said:

Where is the fun fighting an enemy no better than you are?

If the enemy is only better than I am because of the technology they have, then they are not truly better than I, are they? And in such a case, why would I wish to fight them, as I would either be defeating a foe that -still- could not match me even with an imbalanced advantage or that had only prevailed because of the technology gap. Either instance is not a fight worthy of a Clan warrior, quiaff?

[Bishop Steiner]

Death Storm, on 09 December 2013 - 05:36 AM, said:

Simple solution to your problem BUY CLAN TECH yourself

yeah, that solves EVERYTHING.

And makes the last 2 years of development totally wasted. The point is to find a way to incentivize playing BOTH the Clans and the Inner Sphere.

Since most of you twitch kids don't give a {Scrap} about the actual IP, and simply want the better guns as a crutch, they know your whining will become legion if you actually have to deal with balancers like fighting outnumbered, to compensate.

[Kitty Bacon]

Bishop Steiner, on 11 December 2013 - 05:09 PM, said:

yeah, that solves EVERYTHING.

And makes the last 2 years of development totally wasted. The point is to find a way to incentivize playing BOTH the Clans and the Inner Sphere.

Since most of you twitch kids don't give a {Scrap} about the actual IP, and simply want the better guns as a crutch, they know your whining will become legion if you actually have to deal with balancers like fighting outnumbered, to compensate.

And because of the Whining, U.I. 2.0 and CW will prolly be delayed heavily so that Clans will be introduced sooner than Q3-4 of 2014 like they said. I will be a very happy and proud IS pilot when I destroy Clanners after PGI has reworked their 'OP' equipment through their balancing system.

[Odanan]

pbiggz, on 09 December 2013 - 10:33 AM, said:

This is bad thing number one. You are encouraging exodus to clan tech, which trivializes IS tech.

Game designers dont make entire systems, and then introduce new systems thereby rendering the old ones inferior, stop glorifying overpowered gear.

Clan mechs and weapons WILL be nerfed. PGI has stated this and Randal Bills, the man who created the clans, supports it. Clan tech will however bring a DIFFERENT flavour to the field. Do you understand? Clan tech cannot be BETTER than IS tech, but it can be DIFFERENT.

Also if you try to balance by facing 10 clanners against 12 Inner Sphere, then what happens when mercenaries (who have access to tech via black market) buy clan tech and then field 12 clan tech mechs against 10 clanners or 12 inner sphere. You may as well throw your half baked system out the window at that point.


I have shot down these ****** little arguments countless times and will continue to do so until people stop clinging to their fantasies for easy win clan equipment.

Explain me how Clan XL Engine, Clan Ferro Fibrous, Clan Endo Steel, Clan LRMs and so on will not be better without completely breaking Clan canon builds.

I have an idea for the Clans: don't make them.

Or make them fight only each other.

Anyway, I want to continue to play with my IS mechs against a fair opponent (preferentially against only IS tech).

[Kitty Bacon]

Odanan, on 11 December 2013 - 05:27 PM, said:

Explain me how Clan XL Engine, Clan Ferro Fibrous, Clan Endo Steel, Clan LRMs and so on will not be better without completely breaking Clan canon builds.

I have an idea for the Clans: don't make them.

Or make them fight only each other.

Anyway, I want to continue to play with my IS mechs against a fair opponent (preferentially against only IS tech).

Because this is a game that has to have all of the playing cards balanced and able to play. You can't just shove tech that is so superior that everything before, 2 years worth of development for is wasted. That does not make a good game. If you want that, play the TT set in 3050 or so. Clans have to be balanced so a team of 8 Clans with 4 IS mechs vs 8 IS mechs and 4 Clans won't put the ones with the most Clan tech ahead of everyone else. That may of worked in other MW games because they were mostly SINGLE PLAYER but this is a MMO like WoT. If WoT was true to stories about WWII, the Tiger Tank and many other tanks would steamroll over everything because that's how it was in the stories. But they don't do that and make the game fun with every faction. And that is what MWO has to do to grow.

[Odanan]

KinLuu, on 11 December 2013 - 06:28 AM, said:

Well, I do not.

I want a balanced game.

And I am happy PGI agrees with my POV. For now. It is their position at this time.

We don't have a game balanced by now! Do you think when they will introduce UCA/20s and SSRM6s it will the better?

[Odanan]

Blue doqyn, on 11 December 2013 - 05:32 PM, said:

Because this is a game that has to have all of the playing cards balanced and able to play. You can't just shove tech that is so superior that everything before, 2 years worth of development for is wasted. That does not make a good game. If you want that, play the TT set in 3050 or so. Clans have to be balanced so a team of 8 Clans with 4 IS mechs vs 8 IS mechs and 4 Clans won't put the ones with the most Clan tech ahead of everyone else. That may of worked in other MW games because they were mostly SINGLE PLAYER but this is a MMO like WoT. If WoT was true to stories about WWII, the Tiger Tank and many other tanks would steamroll over everything because that's how it was in the stories. But they don't do that and make the game fun with every faction. And that is what MWO has to do to grow.

The Tiger is still much superior of the Panzer II, for instance. Did they nerfed the Tiger?

World of Tanks resolved the "balance" by putting vehicles of the same power (tier) fighting together.

MWO should do that.

Blue doqyn, on 11 December 2013 - 05:32 PM, said:

Because this is a game that has to have all of the playing cards balanced and able to play.

Asymmetrical warfare.

10 Clans vs. 16 IS mechs would be a fair fight.

[Kitty Bacon]

Odanan, on 11 December 2013 - 05:41 PM, said:

The Tiger is still much superior of the Panzer II, for instance. Did they nerfed the Tiger?

World of Tanks resolved the "balance" by putting vehicles of the same power (tier) fighting together.

MWO should do that.

You actually got a point. Base the weapon/loadout you have on your mech in MM and have that point put you in your tier. Or even have a point scale system where you have so many points you can put on your mech before being bumped to the next tier in MM to fight. Could be a neat idea lol

[AEgg]

ssm, on 11 December 2013 - 04:55 AM, said:

You'll just be able to cram more DHS.

- less crits
- weight saved on less bulkier endo & ferro, lighter and less bulky weapons & equipment and risk-free Xl engines.

If anything, I'm sure they'll be able to shell way more DPS - comparable heat (see above - more DHS) on top of increased damage.

You won't be able to add more HS if clan mech's aren't customizable, or are less customizable than IS mechs (maybe only modify equipped weapons but nothing else?). True that won't solve everything (some stock clan mechs would still be good), but it's one solution to one problem. Balancing clan mechs without making them substantially weaker than in the lore is possible, it's just more difficult than just dropping the numbers and calling it a day.

Blue doqyn, on 11 December 2013 - 05:43 PM, said:

You actually got a point. Base the weapon/loadout you have on your mech in MM and have that point put you in your tier. Or even have a point scale system where you have so many points you can put on your mech before being bumped to the next tier in MM to fight. Could be a neat idea lol

Multiple tiers is fundamentally a bad idea. Everyone just wants to use the best tier, and the rest are useless for any sort of fair play. Useless content is wasted development time.

It only works in WoT because that entire game is built upon a foundation of money=power. When it requires real money to maintain the best stuff, it isn't as common as everything else. But that's fundamentally bad design, unless you're an accountant aiming to capture the people with the mindset that a game isn't meaningless when it depends mostly on who has more money to throw at it.

[VanillaG]

elsie, on 11 December 2013 - 02:06 PM, said:

I don't see where clan weapons are supposedly hotter than IS, unless you are referring to previous versions of computer Mechwarrior that followed BattleTech about as closely as Verhoven followed the Starship Troopers book.

Sarna has clan and IS ER PPCs at the same heat (15) and range, but clan has 50% more damage and one less ton and crit slot. But that's just one weapon. Going down the list of weapons on sarna.net it looks like clan and IS weapons have the same heat, but the clans have various combinations of more range or more damage and usually lighter and fewer crit slots. And given the MWO player proclivity of stacking as much of the biggest alpha they can find, that increases the disparity between damage potential. IE. clan weapons are OP. They were when they were introduced 23 years ago and continued to be a disruptive influence on any attempt to play in the Battletech universe. Unless you threw out all pretense of a backstory and wanted to play "pew pew" with the BFG.

Daishi vs Altas (or two, maybe even three): I'm thinking the Big D wins most of the time.


elsie

The reason that clan weapons are considered hotter is that they only have access to ER versions of lasers/PPC, which generate more heat that non-ER laser. The non-ER laser are what the IS downgraded to due to lost knowledge and are not available to the Clans.

[GalaxyBluestar]

ssm, on 11 December 2013 - 03:41 AM, said:

I'm pretty sure I already went through your ideas, but well, lets recap:

1) Creating new system to put an leash on rewards/enforce Zellbringen - useless,.

Too many people don't care about rewards at all, or settle on mech/mechs they already have - see R & R fisco.
You could reinforce Zellbringen in game by, for example, shutting down non-compliant pilot for few seconds. But it will seriously screw not only relation to lore, but also dynamic of gameplay.

Either way - not worth it.

so gameplay will carry on as usuall and after the clan window dressing grab deal then what? UI 2.0 and CW? game will be bored to death by then, we need a change not more pretty robots to level up!


2) Making chassis and hitboxes bigger than IS counterparts - useless

See Shadow Hawk - it's oversized, but because it has some good things going for it, it's still very good mech. Clan Mechs would have everything going good for them, so to make actual worthwhile balance result, they would have to bloat the models extremely - to the point of clan mechs looking downright silly.

for viable medium see - ac meta high hardpoint meta JJ meta.

for scale see - quickdraw trebuchet awesome catapult because they'd like to talk to you how their size mechs them oh so good. then centurion and stalker for how their messed up hitboxes and down scaling made them ****. oh and kintaro was great when it first came out, enough to get a hot fix on it's hitboxes.

Mech design is one of the MWO strongest points (some argue that it's only one), they can't squander that.

in the short term you're right in the longterm ie: 3-6months {yeah this game's long term is 3-6months because anyfurther will be a mirical PGI is already playing their last ace with clans} if there's nothing more to do than arena shoot it's in the same boat of mediocrity like IS.

3) Number of mechs per deployment, pilot trees - workable, but simply not enough.

we're both speculating

Addendum:

- You accusation of PGI taking "easy route" is unfair - because they took the hardest one. By making MWO mechs almost fully TT-transferable they seriously restricted their options of balancing the game, but at the same time - MWO mech design is as closest to lore as possible without IT being unviable as computer game.

"Easy route" games:

1) MW: LL - no customisation, no problems.

2) MW4 - as far as mech/weapon design and gameplay is concerned, they didn't care a lot about either lore or TT. They just went easy route of mixtech and thus made all IS tech obsolete.

3) MW1-3 - they weren't designed for multiplayer, so balance wasn't a factor in their design. At all.

now easy route money makers via minimum viable product is as i've mentioned. customisables was the main money spinner and that why this game did it, the balancing so far proves PGI can't handle it but it MAKES MONEY EASY!

- Your assumption of planned Clan tech being "10-30% less effcient/effective to what is really exsisting IS mechanics" is at best just completely baseless. My bet is they'll tweak with things like fire rates, damage etc. to make them only slightly more effective than IS counterparts, and then, on top of it - introduce nerfs in other areas (pilot skills, drop numbers, etc.)

you're right it is an assumption everybody's dicussion on the matter is an assumption because nothing's happened yet. we're all predicting and mine is based on the previous actions of the last year and the company's track record. the other side are still looking at how things were done in the past before PGI. that's where i think people are wrong about how the clans would work in this game and i think PGI are screwing themselves over by believing in the fear before even building and testing it themselves. but hey the phoenix money isn't infaniante better push the next grab deal out the door in the same rushed half measured way it's always been.

see - ecm to cure streak boat lurmer crybabys, 3rd person cause tutorials are hard, conquest because dropship mode is hard, phoenix because UI is hard. we're only just seeing the begining of turrets after 6+ months!

ssm, on 11 December 2013 - 04:23 AM, said:

Still twice as powerful as most (if not all) stock IS mechs.

btw stock loadouts... your basing things on stock loadouts... yeah.

Bishop Steiner, on 11 December 2013 - 05:09 PM, said:

yeah, that solves EVERYTHING.

And makes the last 2 years of development totally wasted. The point is to find a way to incentivize playing BOTH the Clans and the Inner Sphere.

Since most of you twitch kids don't give a {Scrap} about the actual IP, and simply want the better guns as a crutch, they know your whining will become legion if you actually have to deal with balancers like fighting outnumbered, to compensate.

i totally agree with you, but OP weapons are no good if their's two targets against you. do you believe today's poptarter could win 2vs1 with pilots of equal skill and say it was an orion and hunchback vs the highlander? or perhaps 3vs1 either way there is a limit to what clan weapons can do but to pull back the loadouts and mech lab potential of clans is like as someone's mentioned taking the tiger's gun away so that it only takes one sherman to beat him. is that the gameplay you want? same as before? a lot of growth is going out the window when new boss mech is same as the old boss mech.

yeah i'd love to fight an outnummbered lance or try the challenge of taking on 3 at a time as standard practice but that requires dynamic learning. this game is already falling to twitch shooters {they speed the animation up for no reason other than for the twitch shooter appeal} wouldn't surprise me if the clans get netured so far as you could have mixed drops without an "unfair" advantage. that's how boring it's going to be.

innersphere 2.0 is coming

Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 11 December 2013 - 07:30 PM.

[BLOOD WOLF]

elsie, on 11 December 2013 - 02:06 PM, said:

I don't see where clan weapons are supposedly hotter than IS, unless you are referring to previous versions of computer Mechwarrior that followed BattleTech about as closely as Verhoven followed the Starship Troopers book.

Sarna has clan and IS ER PPCs at the same heat (15) and range, but clan has 50% more damage and one less ton and crit slot. But that's just one weapon. Going down the list of weapons on sarna.net it looks like clan and IS weapons have the same heat, but the clans have various combinations of more range or more damage and usually lighter and fewer crit slots. And given the MWO player proclivity of stacking as much of the biggest alpha they can find, that increases the disparity between damage potential. IE. clan weapons are OP. They were when they were introduced 23 years ago and continued to be a disruptive influence on any attempt to play in the Battletech universe. Unless you threw out all pretense of a backstory and wanted to play "pew pew" with the BFG.

Daishi vs Altas (or two, maybe even three): I'm thinking the Big D wins most of the time.


elsie

srry, was playing mechwarrior 2 and my mad dog kept shutting down, just venting

[Vanguard319]

Just a balancing proposal on my part:

IS mechs/weapons:

+ components are more durable, and less susceptible to criticals
+ Heat buildup is lower (excluding ER weapons)
+ has standard Autocannons (no jamming like Ultras, or random shot placement like LB-X), even more of a plus if we ever get light ACs.

- heavier and bulkier
- less damage
- shorter range (with exception of ER weapons)

Clan mechs/weapons:

+ Longer range
+ More damage
+ Lighter and less bulky

- Components are less durable as a penalty to reduced weight
- Clan Endo Steel is less either durable, or more susceptible to criticals (penalty for less bulk)
- Clans do not have standard Autocannons, and use either LB-X, or Ultras, with all their pros/cons
- As virtually all Clan lasers are ER, they naturally generate more heat

Clan XL engine: retains normal values/rules, (assuming reactor shielding is thinner, but more dense.) since a standard engine is still better for a zombie brawler, but is more expensive than the IS equivalent.

Clan Ferro Fibrous: retain normal values, since armor protection per ton (35.84 IS vs 38.4 Clan) isn't a significant game breaking increase, and durability has already been balanced out with above proposals.

Clan LRMs: Launchers retain their lack of a minimum range, but at the cost of being Line-of Sight weapons, incapable of indirect fire without a spotter with TAG, NARC, or a UAV providing targeting data. (considered an acceptable sacrifice, since Zellbrigen forbids the combatants from moving out of line of sight) Retain their weight and bulk, at the cost of durability as mentioned above.

Clan DHS: heat dissipation is identical to IS version, but is less durable to reflect reduced bulk (i.e if IS DHS has 3 HP, then the Clan version has 2 HP)

XP values for mech and pilot trees are the same, but offer lower returns to reflect Clan pilots better training.

In addition, an IS mech's internals suffer the same penalties as their clan counterparts if outfitted with clan tech, conversely, a clan mech's internals becomes more durable if outfitted with IS tech. (to allow for mixed tech builds)

[GalaxyBluestar]

Vanguard319, on 11 December 2013 - 11:38 PM, said:

fair proposals

durability values is another part of negating clan superiority whilst not destroying it outright. nice.

[Odanan]

Blue doqyn, on 11 December 2013 - 05:43 PM, said:

You actually got a point. Base the weapon/loadout you have on your mech in MM and have that point put you in your tier. Or even have a point scale system where you have so many points you can put on your mech before being bumped to the next tier in MM to fight. Could be a neat idea lol

I'm talking about a simple solution. These MWO Elo and Match Making are obscure and probably over-complicated.

I propose separating the matches in 3 tiers:

1- low tech IS tier: only IS mechs with level 1 tech. (no ER weapons, no XL, no DHS, no EE, no FF, no UAC, no ECM, no TAG, no NARC, no SSRM, no Artemis)
2- high tech IS tier
3- Clan tier

If there is a group of mixed tech tiers, they will fight in the most advanced tier in the group.
Done. Clan problem solved.

[Odanan]

Vanguard319, on 11 December 2013 - 11:38 PM, said:

Just a balancing proposal on my part:
[no balance at all]

So your balance proposal is just to make IS mechs suffer longer?

Clearly a proposal by someone who wants to play with the Clans...

[Odanan]

BLOOD WOLF, on 11 December 2013 - 08:45 PM, said:

srry, was playing mechwarrior 2 and my mad dog kept shutting down, just venting

Mad Dog is a terrible mech. A waste of Clan tech.
In fact, those who examine deep the stats know that the 3050 Clan mechs are sloppily built.

[Odanan]

AEgg, on 11 December 2013 - 06:38 PM, said:

Multiple tiers is fundamentally a bad idea. Everyone just wants to use the best tier, and the rest are useless for any sort of fair play. Useless content is wasted development time.

I think you don't understand how the low tiers work: you can have a great fun playing with the lower tiers because you will be playing only against enemies of the same level.

When I played WoT, I used to play only in the tiers I and II (even if I have tanks tier V and above) - the battles where much more fun. Now, I do the same with War Thunder.

The development time is not wasted! Some people like to play with the old IS low tech. Heck, some even would like to play only with and against stock mechs.

Edited by Odanan, 12 December 2013 - 08:43 AM.

[ssm]

Odanan, on 12 December 2013 - 03:20 AM, said:

I'm talking about a simple solution. These MWO Elo and Match Making are obscure and probably over-complicated.

I propose separating the matches in 3 tiers:

1- low tech IS tier: only IS mechs with level 1 tech. (no ER weapons, no XL, no DHS, no EE, no FF, no UAC, no ECM, no TAG, no NARC, no SSRM, no Artemis)
2- high tech IS tier
3- Clan tier

If there is a group of mixed tech tiers, they will fight in the most advanced tier in the group.
Done. Clan problem solved.

It is legit proposal, but it completely misses the point of balancing Clan & IS mechs against each other.

[Odanan]

ssm, on 12 December 2013 - 03:45 AM, said:

It is legit proposal, but it completely misses the point of balancing Clan & IS mechs against each other.

Oh but that's exactly what I want.
You can't balance something that's superior in everything.