1978 replies to this topic

[Thor 33]

I'm more interested in the clan XL, Endo, and FF. However, I'm most interested in the clan's Double Heatsinks. Since this game is skewed so heavily towards AC's (I only imagine the dev's here liked ac's in the tabletop and hated lasers) I would really like the two crit actual DOUBLE heat sinks. Since we have ghost heat and 3 out of 4 maps played is either terra therma, caustic valley or the tourmaline desert, the dev's seem to be trying to make laser builds inferior to ac builds. I know this because my cataphract with 4 ac 2's does by far the most damage of any other mech I have that uses missiles or lasers. So, how about no ghost heat and real heat sinks?

[Kotrin]

I feel stupid.

I offered constructive criticism, hoped for the best, tried to imagine how MWO would implement Clan tech in a way suitable for everyone... Then I remembered PGI behind and learned to lower my expectations.

This is not what I want, but what we'll probably see regarding clan tech:

- TT values thrown out of the window.

- More Ghost Heat, extra recharge delays, long beam durations, slow-moving slugs, U-AC jamming every other shot, etc. The only real advantage Clans will have is a longer range.

- Clan and IS 'Mech will be intermingled in both teams (like 7 IS + 5 Clan vs. 4 IS + 8 Clan)

- No Zellbringen because it's annoying to explain and to code, so let's not bother with such things

- Clans and IS will use the same "Comstar-bill" currency but everything Clan-related will cost 20% to 50% or even 100% more

- Again, we'll see 'Mech, champion 'Mech and hero Clan 'Mech, for more MC, but as "high-end avatars" they'll cost like 8'000-12'000 MC each. Sounds expensive? Remember it's from the guys that brought you $500 gold skins

- At this point it's not sure if IS will be able to mount Clan weapons or vice-versa but since we should aim for the worst it will probably be possible.

There are my expectations for Clan implementation. Awful from start to finish but at least with a list like that I can't be really disappointed.

[Taemien]

Kotrin, on 24 December 2013 - 08:43 AM, said:

I feel stupid.

I offered constructive criticism, hoped for the best, tried to imagine how MWO would implement Clan tech in a way suitable for everyone... Then I remembered PGI behind and learned to lower my expectations.

This is not what I want, but what we'll probably see regarding clan tech:

- TT values thrown out of the window.

- More Ghost Heat, extra recharge delays, long beam durations, slow-moving slugs, U-AC jamming every other shot, etc. The only real advantage Clans will have is a longer range.

- Clan and IS 'Mech will be intermingled in both teams (like 7 IS + 5 Clan vs. 4 IS + 8 Clan)

- No Zellbringen because it's annoying to explain and to code, so let's not bother with such things

- Clans and IS will use the same "Comstar-bill" currency but everything Clan-related will cost 20% to 50% or even 100% more

- Again, we'll see 'Mech, champion 'Mech and hero Clan 'Mech, for more MC, but as "high-end avatars" they'll cost like 8'000-12'000 MC each. Sounds expensive? Remember it's from the guys that brought you $500 gold skins

- At this point it's not sure if IS will be able to mount Clan weapons or vice-versa but since we should aim for the worst it will probably be possible.

There are my expectations for Clan implementation. Awful from start to finish but at least with a list like that I can't be really disappointed.

How is this constructive?

"Oh woe is us, we're getting screwed by a big evil greed corporation."

I don't understand how you could even post, much less play a game made by a company you don't like, trust, or care about.

[J0anna]

Grey Knight, on 23 December 2013 - 05:54 PM, said:

We wont change nothing as long as we dont act as ONE community. So we need to "force" (not Buying anything) PGI to change things to the way the majority wants.

That doesn't always work, the community voted over 90% to not have 3rd person view - yet it was implemented.

Without the ability to swap out engines and/or add/subtract armor, omnimechs will remain inferior to battlemechs. With ONLY 'superior' weapons to balance them, 'superior' weapons that will suffer horrible ghost heat and have nerfed ranges/damage/heat - sorry but these pre-nerfed mechs are NOT clan mechs, no matter what they look like. I was putting aside money for Clan mechs, but won't be spending it on these Sham mechs....

Looking down the road, PGI isn't setting up this game to follow the BT timeline in any way. 3050 was all about the arms race, as the Clans showed the Inner Sphere what could be done, and eventually the Inner Sphere expanded on those designs and pushed them to the limit.

Battletech HAS a balancing mechanism, it's called Battle Value. All Mechs have a Battle Value, a BV 1000 mech has very little chance against a BV 2000 mech. The standard Timber Wolf prime has a BV of 2252, An Orion ON1-M has a BV of 1192, add in adjusted ELO of each player and it's highly probable that The Timber Wolf would have to face 2 Orions (note modifications made by players would probably raise both BV's a significant amount). This is how to balance clan weapons (if you were going to prohibit mixed tech).

[Wolfways]

Taemien, on 24 December 2013 - 09:03 AM, said:

How is this constructive?

"Oh woe is us, we're getting screwed by a big evil greed corporation."

I don't understand how you could even post, much less play a game made by a company you don't like, trust, or care about.

Some of us still read the forums even though we don't/rarely play because we care about what happens to the game because it's the only "official" BT/MW game. Since the release of the Clan info this is the only thread i keep up with now as PGI have managed to remove just about everything BT from MWO.
But you can be happy with the knowledge that if PGI do keep Clan mechs anything like the proposed concept then there'll be less of us reading and/or posting.

[Drunk Canuck]

I feel I need to add more to this thread after having some time to let thoughts brew because my initial reactions were a little more irrational then they are now.

First off, I would like to say that while I appreciate the changing of the Clan Mech's to be purchased as individual sets of 3 chassis, I still feel insulted that you are charging a starting price of $55 in order to force people into buying the packages if they want more. Ideally what you should have done is just charge the base price of $30 dollars for 3 variants, or just not offer prime variants as hero Mech's for single chassis buyers, that way if people want the hero versions they have to pay extra but also get the premium time with it. Ideally if I had it my way, I'd buy the Daishi package if I could swap out 3 of the other chassis for the other Mech in it's weight class, so I'd prefer the Adder and Mad Cat over the Summoner and Kit Fox. If you guys made that change, I would drop money for that package like it's hot.

Secondly, I want to discuss balance, just from a general gameplay aspect. There are a lot of things wrong with the meta game currently and I think it's something that needs to be addressed before Clan Mech's launch, lest we have an even larger plethora of balance issues to contend with.

My first point in regards to balancing the game has to do with heat. What was wrong with using tabletop values for weapons? Nothing, there wasn't anything wrong with heat values. Heat penalties are unnecessary and could be removed from the game entirely if PGI adjusted the heat threshold to about half of what it is currently. In tabletop and in the lore, firing a pair of PPC's like in a Warhammer causes heat build up like crazy and one would have to wait a reasonable amount of time before firing them again. Or the Rifleman, with two Large Lasers and a pair of AC5's runs very hot, in this game that is considered a cool running but still very high alpha build that has a fairly consistent rate of fire due to the heat threshold. If you drop the heat threshold by 50% and keep heat values where they are, they will force players to adopt more versatile weapons loadouts and the game won't be a complete poptarting cheese factory that it is now, only the bravest of souls would dare run 2 PPC's and an AC20 in an assault Mech lest they shut down every time they fire and even then they would be hindered by their lack of heat dissipation that closing the distance on them quickly would take them out of the fight rather easily because not only are standard PPC's relegated to 90 meters or more, but they would only have the AC20 to fire which is limited in ammo and generates a lot of heat. Get it done PGI, this game desperately needs it!

Secondly, I have heard a lot of complaints about convergence and pinpoint alpha strikes and I think that is something that is broken. Just flat out get rid of convergence and force shots to require precise timing in order to hit because it seems like players just alpha strike in hopes that they hit a component with enough damage to destroy an engine, making XL engines very fragile in the current state of the game due to how easy it is to blow out the shoulders on a lot of Mech's still. In changing the heat threshold, pin point alpha strikes become a lot more threatening to the shooter because trying to hit that one shot for a kill could cause you to get killed from being shut down for too long. Maybe make alpha strikes fire rather wildly too if you alpha strike with heavy weapons, that would be interesting.

Hit detection is the final issue I would like to bring up. SRM's are still broken and with the current meta game, they are worthless because you can be shredded open by the time you get in close enough to use them. So you have two problems that currently combine and relate to the same issues as I have stated above. I love SRM's but they currently are a bit too hot because of the heat penalty and the detection is so broken that they aren't really worth carrying over longer range lasers, ballistics or Streak SRM's.

Edited by Drunk Canuck, 24 December 2013 - 12:11 PM.

[roflplanes]

Moenrg, on 24 December 2013 - 10:53 AM, said:

That doesn't always work, the community voted over 90% to not have 3rd person view - yet it was implemented.

Without the ability to swap out engines and/or add/subtract armor, omnimechs will remain inferior to battlemechs. With ONLY 'superior' weapons to balance them, 'superior' weapons that will suffer horrible ghost heat and have nerfed ranges/damage/heat - sorry but these pre-nerfed mechs are NOT clan mechs, no matter what they look like. I was putting aside money for Clan mechs, but won't be spending it on these Sham mechs....

Looking down the road, PGI isn't setting up this game to follow the BT timeline in any way. 3050 was all about the arms race, as the Clans showed the Inner Sphere what could be done, and eventually the Inner Sphere expanded on those designs and pushed them to the limit.

Battletech HAS a balancing mechanism, it's called Battle Value. All Mechs have a Battle Value, a BV 1000 mech has very little chance against a BV 2000 mech. The standard Timber Wolf prime has a BV of 2252, An Orion ON1-M has a BV of 1192, add in adjusted ELO of each player and it's highly probable that The Timber Wolf would have to face 2 Orions (note modifications made by players would probably raise both BV's a significant amount). This is how to balance clan weapons (if you were going to prohibit mixed tech).

HOLY GOD ALMIGHTY, WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO GRASP??? When I suggested tonnage yesterday, I completely neglected to remember the whole BV thing... but seriously, this solves EVERYONE'S problems........ Plus, combined with ELO (another hard, mathematical function), it turns your matchmaking (even though it shouldn't be hard regardless) into a simple mathematical algorithm. Everyone's lives are instantly easier.

[Drunk Canuck]

Wolf87535, on 24 December 2013 - 07:02 AM, said:

I have a better idea, leave the clan tech EXACTLY how it compares between IS and Clans on the TT (No min range LRM, SSRM6, etc). Make omni mechs EXACTLY how they appear. No customization at all. Period. A Timber Wolf A is a Timber Wolf A, exactly like every other Timber Wolf A. The limitations on customization will balance the far superior tech, Clans balanced.
Complete that with 2 stars (10 mechs) vs. 3 lances (12 mechs).

To some extent you are right, but what about the Warhawk Prime variant which has 12 ER Medium Lasers? How are they going to balance a Medium Mech with the ability to shoot at 750 meters? The one weapon alone has an 11-15 range in tabletop, which is almost as long as an IS Large Laser with far less heat generation. Some builds are going to be insanely difficult even if they lock the variants as stock for a while until they can get the game really balanced out and get Clan tech well ingrained into the player base.

[roflplanes]

Drunk Canuck, on 24 December 2013 - 12:07 PM, said:

My first point in regards to balancing the game has to do with heat. What was wrong with using tabletop values for weapons? Nothing, there wasn't anything wrong with heat values. Heat penalties are unnecessary and could be removed from the game entirely if PGI adjusted the heat threshold to about half of what it is currently. In tabletop and in the lore, firing a pair of PPC's like in a Warhammer causes heat build up like crazy and one would have to wait a reasonable amount of time before firing them again. Or the Rifleman, with two Large Lasers and a pair of AC5's runs very hot, in this game that is considered a cool running but still very high alpha build that has a fairly consistent rate of fire due to the heat threshold. If you drop the heat threshold by 50% and keep heat values where they are, they will force players to adopt more versatile weapons loadouts and the game won't be a complete poptarting cheese factory that it is now, only the bravest of souls would dare run 2 PPC's and an AC20 in an assault Mech lest they shut down every time they fire and even then they would be hindered by their lack of heat dissipation that closing the distance on them quickly would take them out of the fight rather easily because not only are standard PPC's relegated to 90 meters or more, but they would only have the AC20 to fire which is limited in ammo and generates a lot of heat. Get it done PGI, this game desperately needs it!

On this topic, I'm 100% on board with heat going to a lower threshold/higher dissipation model to limit alpha-ing high damage builds randomly, but we also need to fix damage simultaneously for that to work. If I can only fire my PPC half as often without shutting down, it logically follows that my opponent shouldn't also have double armor...

If we remove armor values to where they SHOULD be, people wouldn't NEED to boat weapons to be effective and viable on the battlefield. As frustrating as it is, an AC/20 SHOULD be a 1-hit kill on many small builds when properly applied. In that case, I'm very ok with it generating crippling amounts of heat.

[roflplanes]

Drunk Canuck, on 24 December 2013 - 12:15 PM, said:

To some extent you are right, but what about the Warhawk Prime variant which has 12 ER Medium Lasers? How are they going to balance a Medium Mech with the ability to shoot at 750 meters? The one weapon alone has an 11-15 range in tabletop, which is almost as long as an IS Large Laser with far less heat generation. Some builds are going to be insanely difficult even if they lock the variants as stock for a while until they can get the game really balanced out and get Clan tech well ingrained into the player base.

Because the build value of that Warhawk is going to be SIGNIFICANTLY higher than a comparably armed IS 'mech running inferior tech. So when it's facing two or three inferior but similarly armed IS 'mechs, things magically even themselves out.

[Kotrin]

Taemien, on 24 December 2013 - 09:03 AM, said:

How is this constructive?

"Oh woe is us, we're getting screwed by a big evil greed corporation."

I don't understand how you could even post, much less play a game made by a company you don't like, trust, or care about.

Oh, you're the kind of guy thinking PGI will actually consider - let alone read - this very thread? How cute!

It's constructive in the way I'll find out how Clans will actually be implemented and then I'll compare with what I wrote above. I can't expect to be 100% on spot for everything but I'm aiming for a good 75%. Make your bets!

We're not "screwed by a big evil greed corporation" but rather screwed by a small, irrelevant corporation, until it goes under (and it will). Honestly, I don't know how they managed to catch this franchise to create this glorified deathmatch they dare call a "thinking first person's shooter" but should not I enjoy BT universe I would have erupted in laughter and uninstalled this game long ago.

PGI just tried to make a poor World of Tank clone and maybe they managed to persuade BT franchise owners they'd make millions out of it. In a way, that's just hilarious.

Clan implementation is another last-ditch attempt to grab players with more power candy. The fact clans will reach the game before CW is telling (and this is why I guess we'll have aberrations like IS+Clan teams.) It's just like they never understood the game, the concepts, the world, the mechanism of BT. But I've finally understood their alien way of thinking. Use a marketing state of mind instead of sticking to BT lore like most diehard fans out here and you'll get that my prevision of clan implementation has more chances to see the light than any suggestion around.

Meanwhile, this is supposed to be a F2P game so I'm allowed to play and post in forums without giving them a dime, and that's probably the best thing we can do.

I play a game made by a company I don't like, trust, or care about, but I like the franchise. Have a nice X-mas.

[Capt Sternn]

Actually to make it fair it would have to be 8 IS vs. 5 clan, or 16 IS vs. 10 clan. This or a BV o system or Double tonage for Clan mechs Balances it without making a million half messures.

[nemesis271989]

IS mechs HAZ to be upgrade-able.

• In order to receive an upgrade I think it is enough to just kill a clan mech.
  
• The one who killed a clan mech now can go and salvage.
  
• In order to salvage you need:for example stop on killed mech-wreak for let's say 10 seconds then you can extract 1 let's say laser or whatever was operational on clan mech after it has fallen.
  
• You can get ONLY 1 CLAN ITEM PER KILL/MATCH (if successfully salvaged)
  
• When extracting an item you can't leave that spot for 10 seconds
  
• Extraction Item can be 1 heat sink, lasers of any kind, endo steel even an engine.system must pick it randomly from a destroyed clan mech BUT MUST BE 1 Item or an UPGRADE.
  
• After all you may do with it whatever, sell / use on your IS MECHS or if you are part of any organization just donate that item to one of your co-workers at current organization (donation is questionable).

I think this kind of pattern will make IS players want to kill a clan mech. So, IS resistance will be here ))))

Edited by nemesis271989, 24 December 2013 - 12:51 PM.

[Taemien]

Kotrin, on 24 December 2013 - 12:34 PM, said:

Oh, you're the kind of guy thinking PGI will actually consider - let alone read - this very thread? How cute!

Considering I've had devs reply to my posts. They've even implemented suggestions made by me. Even the concept of omnimechs is part of that (minus the arm switching, great way to avoid an art delimma that omni hardpoints would have caused). Coincidence it probably is but the fact remains, they will respond and listen to you, IF and only IF, you stay constructive. Why would they listen to the bile of people who just want attention? Someone who insults them, yet is still hanging around, playing, and even buying {Scrap} still.

Constructive posts and money talks, nothing else. You want to hurt them? Stop paying, stop posting. Even by posting here you up their activity levels. You become a nice little statistic that shows they have an active forum and hence an active game.

[Whatzituyah]

Taemien, on 24 December 2013 - 03:13 PM, said:

Considering I've had devs reply to my posts. They've even implemented suggestions made by me. Even the concept of omnimechs is part of that (minus the arm switching, great way to avoid an art delimma that omni hardpoints would have caused). Coincidence it probably is but the fact remains, they will respond and listen to you, IF and only IF, you stay constructive. Why would they listen to the bile of people who just want attention? Someone who insults them, yet is still hanging around, playing, and even buying {Scrap} still.

Constructive posts and money talks, nothing else. You want to hurt them? Stop paying, stop posting. Even by posting here you up their activity levels. You become a nice little statistic that shows they have an active forum and hence an active game.

Then how do we express what we are disappointed about without posting here?

Edited by Whatzituyah, 24 December 2013 - 05:36 PM.

[Taemien]

Whatzituyah, on 24 December 2013 - 05:35 PM, said:

Then how do we express what we are disappointed about without posting here?

There's a difference between something constructive, and something full of vitriol.

Imagine if I were training you how to do something and you did something the wrong way, how would you like to be corrected? By tell you that you suck and you should do it better, or actually how to do it better?

To quote something from a book, "Anger and spite are brass, courtesy and wit are gold."

[Duck Hunter]

My 2 Cents:

First off I have not ready any of the comments so I don't know if anyone has brought this idea up yet. I think the problem of balance between Clan and Inner Sphere Mechs (IS) and Tech would be easy to solve by sticking to the Battletech Universe rules. IS Mechs should only drop with other IS Mechs and Clan Mechs should only drop with other Clan Mechs. This allows for balance by having the IS Mechs drop in a Company consisting of 3 Lances of 4 Mechs. The Clan Mechs should be dropped in a Binary of 2 Stars of 5 Mechs. Furthermore due to Clan rules regarding honor the Clan drops should have a weight limit imposed so that the players simply cannot drop 10 Assault Mechs to make-up for the lack of numbers.

[Augustus Martelus II]

Even if they write it on the description i still hope we can change the engine type and rating+ the armor value or type.

I don t mind if they balance clan weapons, i m even happy about it. Clan ahve to be superior but not too much.

But hope they will decide to give us the flexibility on the engine and armor (even if its a no, with what i m reading). Because i m the kind to use big engine (mostly standard) even if i need to reduce the weapon load out....witch help me to reduce the heat shut down.

[Veebora]

I really disagree about giving just a small advantage to Clan Mechs and limiting engine and armor.

Clan stuff must be superior, but give it a limit on drop or maybe increase the value. So the teams will be balanced even tho one team has clan mechs and other not.

As theoretical example, one lance composed of inner mechs will have 3 assault and 1 med while the lance composed of clan mechs will have 2 assault, 1 med and 1 light.

[Outlaw]

So Paul you list off the ER Large Lasers for both sides, but fail to mention that IS ER Large Lasers are doing 9 damage and generating only 8.5 heat, so why the hell are you nerfing the hell out of the Clan ER Large Lasers when even at an equivalent heat out-put it's only marginally better?

Edited by Outlaw, 24 December 2013 - 10:38 PM.