1978 replies to this topic

[uebersoldat]

Sounds good guys. I applaud your creativity here while at the same time staying true to the source material.

On top of that I thank you and the team for the transparency. Now to get CW and UI2 into place and working! Once this happens I hope you have a doghouse for me, because that's where I'm going to be after spending that much money on your Clan Packages. (if she ever finds out muahah)

[Thanatos676]

The people in these threads remind of the COD boycott steam group. In that group, they were demanding thing be implemented into COD or they wouldn't buy the game. Then 90% of them did. The people I see complaining here, were doing so before the Project Phoenix mechs came out and were telling people to boycott that sale. Now 90% of them have the Overlord package. Now they are doing the same thing again! I bet most of these people have the Dire Wolf Pack or above in 8 months. We all know how well boycotts on games work as evidenced by the following picture.

[Alek Ituin]

Jack Gallows, on 15 December 2013 - 06:43 AM, said:

Don't need that. He's trying, no need to be condescending to someone who doesn't speak English as their native tongue.

Oh sure, I understand that perfectly. I hold nothing against him for not having as firm a grasp of the English language as those who learned it from birth. It actually is a difficult language to master, but easy enough to pick up.

However, I've always held the belief that if you're trying to make a valid point, make sure people can understand it well enough to make a counter point. Don't butcher your argument by not being able to word it properly.

Edited by Alek Ituin, 15 December 2013 - 06:52 AM.

[Gaan Cathal]

So to summarise:

Omnimechs are less flexible in terms of loadout than Inner Sphere mechs.

A hundred weapon balance tweaks will happen, all at once, delivered by a team that can't balance weapons for toffee (LPL, anyone?).

Clan mech viability will depend entirely on how close that variant is to max armour and how big it's engine is. Under-armoured and under-engined Clan lights will be more DOA than the Flea.

Give Clan weapons the exact same stats as IS ones (or extrapolate, for ER Meds etc) excepting their lower weight. Compensate for lower equipment weight by deploying two stars (10 mechs) against three lances (12 mechs).

Balance from there, some things will end up needing tweaking, but it's a damn sight better of a start point than totally butchering the Clans to jam them into being IS toka-toy mechs with a Clan skin.

Edited by Gaan Cathal, 15 December 2013 - 06:54 AM.

[Jack Gallows]

Clans aren't going to be invading this guys Island.

[SmallPaws]

Dth2Vwls, on 14 December 2013 - 02:26 PM, said:

Thank you for the insight into the implementation of Clan tech. Overall I think it sounds good, but how are you going to handle Ultra Autocannons? If the UAC/20 is similar to the current version of the UAC5, I could easily see it dominating the meta. Have you guys considered changing the UAC's basic mechanics, such as replacing the jam mechanic with a stream of shells (similar to the laser mechanic)?

PGI lazy method is to give it stupid ghost heat.

[Wolke]

You know, I never realy cared about Clans. Honestly.

I knew there are many people that want to play with Clan-Tech and that is fine with me, however I will stick to Inner-Sphere stuff.

When MWO was announced, when PGI pubished all those ideas and plans, what they were going to do with it, I assumed that Clans would be part of the Community Warfare and balanced as such within that Meta.

Fights would be between two or more parties balanced on e.g. some sort of currency (e.g. assault and defence points) spent on that engagement. Clan stuff would be more expensive and as such you would have less or lighter mechs compared to IS when the amount of points spent on both sides was even. Something like that.

Now trying to fit the Clans into the current game, which has no Community Warfare, which is only an endless grind of pointless Deathmatches for XP, where teams are randomly put together with no concern for balance, fun or fluff (house vs house, etc), of course you can't have Clans simply be more powerful than IS. One mech is stil one mech, one player one player. You have no choice but to make Clan tech not more powerful than IS overall.

I see you struggle. You are years behind your schedule. You need customers to stay interested in the game and introducing Clan-Mechs is way easier, even with all that balancing, than introducing a new mechanic like Community Warfare. Also you cannot sell CW like you can sell new shiny mechs.

Yet CW is what the people want. What many of your current and, I'd argue, most of your still interest ex-customers want. That is what will keep them playing for years.

Don't rush the Clan implementation. Stop. Focus on what is important. Implement a well designed, fleshed out CW and THEN implement Clans in a way that makes sense within that great game-mode and in a way that stays true to the BattleTech/Mechwarrior spirit. Your players will thank you for it and you will see that in the income generated over the long run.

Edit:
And don't be afraid to re-think many of the decisions made already.

- Customisation of mechs for CW (is it realy neccessary that we are able to customize the mechs so much for CW? Wouldn't "closer to stock mechs" be more flavour and fun gameplay wise)?
- Convergance / Cone of Fire
- Ghost Heat
- The way weapons work (yes, in general. Refire-rate, do we need Alpha-Strikes?, etc)

Sometimes it is simply better to step back, take a look at the whole picture and, even if it is hard, rework something you already put a lot of time into.

Edited by Wolke, 15 December 2013 - 07:48 AM.

[Keyman1848]

TrentTheWanderer, on 14 December 2013 - 11:39 PM, said:

You could just do a time warp to a period where the arms race has evened out a little. Might as well, we're better than a year off the actual time line as it was meant to occur already.

Then you could add the Uziel!

You highlighted the best fix - move the timeframe where the IS has more advanced weapons. Once the IS has heavy gauss and RACs, things start to even out between clan and IS.

[arkani]

two stars (10 mechs) against three lances (12 mechs), best freaking balance possible, instead of a moronic ghost heat and moronic nerfs on wepons.

KISS- KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID

Edited by arkani, 15 December 2013 - 07:14 AM.

[Alwrathandabout42ninjas]

Squarefox, on 15 December 2013 - 06:06 AM, said:

Simple solution:

• use TT values for all weapons, tech and mechs (that means also 2.0 heat sinks, and please remove ghost heat)
  
• make games 12 IS vs. 8 clanners
  
• use BV to balance teams
  
• bring back repair & rearm to balance expensive tech

result: a true mechwarrior game

^^^ Totally this. Such a simple solution. Want to be in an op clan mech? np. youll be outnumbered, but np.

[Rubidiy]

Generally developers suggest to make both IS tech and Clantech have their advantages and drawbacks. Sounds ok, but won't work without one simple rule: every mech should have the ability to use clantech and IS tech. Otherwise clantech will be nerfed into something really useless.
Main thing is to lessen weight and size difference between IS and clan versions. There's no use in making clantech weapons generate more heat if anyone has enough free space and weight left to place coupla more heatsinks.

[CronuxKobold]

While we're at it, if we want to stick to lore of omni's, why not go all the way? IS mechs can be customized, but have to sit out for long duration of time, how long depending on what is being done to the mech.

[Alek Ituin]

Keyman1848, on 15 December 2013 - 07:11 AM, said:

You highlighted the best fix - move the timeframe where the IS has more advanced weapons. Once the IS has heavy gauss and RACs, things start to even out between clan and IS.

Screw that, where's my Light Gauss Rifle and Magshot? You know, more variety of weight rather than just "HEAVIER!!!! MOAR POWAR!!!!".

We need weapons to fill the 5.5 tons gap between the MG and the AC/2. Lighter 'Mechs are getting screwed by a lack of light weight, relatively hard hitting Ballistic options. I could drag around twin Magshots on a Locust with one ton of ammo, hauling a** at 170kph while doing so, rather than 4 semi-useless MG's.

Edited by Alek Ituin, 15 December 2013 - 07:23 AM.

[CrazyWorm9]

Rhinehardt Ritter, on 14 December 2013 - 06:06 PM, said:

And here we go again. So you guys dont want clan packs for Christmas?

Ever since this game out ppl have been screaming fo CW and clans. The teams that make the mechs are not the same that are writing UI 2.0. They have different teams working in parallel. Think of it like a house. Some guys are Roofing while the plumber installs pipes, and the brick layer is starting to brick it...

It utterly amazes me. Somebody could give you guys a free car and you would complain about the color

Personally I probably won't buy it because I dont see a combo with enough of the mechs I want at a price I am willing to pay. But I am not goung to scream about it

Oh yeah. Hey PGI. I think your proposed method of implementing clans may help keep things from being overly OP when they show up. I like the proposed advantages and disads for some of the weps and mechs. Hope it works.

Thanks

what he said

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Thanatos676, on 15 December 2013 - 06:45 AM, said:

The people in these threads remind of the COD boycott steam group. In that group, they were demanding thing be implemented into COD or they wouldn't buy the game. Then 90% of them did. The people I see complaining here, were doing so before the Project Phoenix mechs came out and were telling people to boycott that sale. Now 90% of them have the Overlord package. Now they are doing the same thing again! I bet most of these people have the Dire Wolf Pack or above in 8 months. We all know how well boycotts on games work as evidenced by the following picture.

Not all of us are hypocrites, Chronojam, myself and many others avoided the Phoenix Project packages.

And that means is we get to make fun of all of you now.

Edited by Nicholas Carlyle, 15 December 2013 - 07:40 AM.

[Mawai]

There is a fundamental flaw in the design reasoning ...

1) Clan tech is supposed to be better. If it isn't better then how can it be clan tech?
2) The balance suggestions appear to be a panacea.
- unless you nerf clan tech into the ground then either the clan version or the IS version of any weapons will be strictly better.
- e.g. The plan to nerf Clan LRM20 ... it still leaves a Clan LRM20 as strictly better than an IS LRM20.

That is the design conundrum. There is no way to create a balance of clan technology using the design philosophy that you have outlined since either
a ) The clan version will be strictly better than the IS version so why use any other
b ) The clan version is functionally equivalent to the IS version so why bother
c ) The clan version is worse than the IS version

It is almost impossible to obtain case b ) unless the items have identical stats and different art work. The design plans call for enhanced performance of clan items with increased heat ... does this take into account the reduced tonnage and crit slots allowing clan tech to be equipped with additional heat sinks?

So ... balancing weapons isn't really possible ... what can they be planning to do??

EXCEPT ...

Read this part carefully :
----------
Now there wouldn’t be balanced unless it came with a cost. In this case, the ability to customize hardpoints comes with the tabletop OmniMech restrictions. All the configurations of a given OmniMech are based around a base configuration (not to be confused with the Prime configuration). This is the core of the Mech, with all the modular bits stripped out, and what remains cannot be customized at all. These include:

• The engine type and rating
  
• The number and placement of a minimum number of heatsinks
  
• The amount and distribution of armor
  
• The armor type and the location of any critical slots occupied by Ferro-Fibrous
  
• The internal structure type and the location of any critical slots occupied by Endo Steel
  
• Enhancements such as MASC
  
• The occasional weapon or other piece of equipment (e.g. jump jets) that is included as part of the base configuration

---------------

This states that you will NOT be able to customize clan mechs by switching engines, heat sinks, armor, etc.

So - the weapon balance may not be as much of an issue because you will NOT be able to customize mechs to support the loadouts ... there will be greater weapon flexibility but heat sinks and engines will be controlled by the chassis. You will NOT be able to customize them. You will NOT be able to max out armor. You may be limited in the number of heat sinks you can add. You will NOT be able to change the speed of the chassis ... so you can expect the clan mechs to be slow compared to their MWO IS counterparts.

Essentially, the design of clan mechs will be fundamentally different from the IS ones we have now. IS mechs can use IS weapons which are less effective ... but the mechs can be fully customized. Clan mechs can use clan weapons that are somewhat more effective, the loadouts are more flexible and weapon pods can be swapped between mechs ... BUT the base characteristics of every chassis are FIXED. Armor, base heat sinks and engine (both size and type) can NOT be changed.

The plan might work to keep IS mechs competitive with clan mechs ... but I can see a lot of unhappy clan aficionados ... and anyone buying the clan pack of mechs should read the design plan carefully since they may not be buying what they think they are buying.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Mawai, on 15 December 2013 - 07:38 AM, said:

Stuff

Funny thing is how similar this is to the ECM vs. BAP relationship.

In TT, ECM counters BAP...in MW:O it's the opposite.

In TT, Clan mechs are very easy to customize, IS not so much. In MW:O it's the opposite.

It's amazing.

[Dirkdaring]

How are you going to address the #1 signature item of clantech, the targeting computer?

[Stunner]

I'm not a clanner but I feel for these guys that invest in this package as it appears they will loose a lot of flexibility.

How about doing this for Clan tech instead of making it confusing by putting in Mech A's arm on Mech B give them Omnipoint hardware slots allowing them to put X number of weapons on that arm and allow them to choose.

I really feel bad for them that they are loosing the engine, and armor upgrades but then again true omni mechs wouldn't have those customized that often and would focus on the weapons.

I understand why you are trying to balance out the obviously overpowered weapons as it is and for those that are worried about the ghost heat remember that clain double heatsinks only take up 2 crit slots. If PGI follows this you can make up for the extra heat with more heatsinks.

I know many of us would prefer that you allow the clans get full customization of the mechs give them the full benefits of their weapons and just allow IS to drop more mechs against the clanners. Give us that feeling of desperation that we are facing a much better opponant. Their pilots are even suppossed to be superior as being genectically bred give them better pilot XP buffs since they will be facing more mechs. Give us the 12 v 8 in IS vs Clan faction wars but give those guys the mechs they have wanted all along and they will buy them. Right now the clan mechs looked so nerf and so unclan like the only thing they are getting is their designs.

Again I'm an IS guy and I want to face a tough opponant it's one of the things that brought me to this game. Yes you need to balance it but I'm not sure this is the right direction.

[Silent]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 15 December 2013 - 07:37 AM, said:

Not all of us are hypocrites, Chronojam, myself and many others avoided the Phoenix Project packages.

And that means is we get to make fun of all of you now.

Ban anyone that has a Founders and a Phoenix Badge and is up in arms right now.