1978 replies to this topic

[Wolfways]

I stick around just hoping that the game gets better.
CW - Going on what PGI have done so far i don't have much hope for a good system.
Clan mechs - Don't see how they'll be viable with PGI's current idea. Also, my favourite mechs are the Mad Dog and Timberwolf Prime variants which are just going to overheat non-stop and have LRM's which are pretty much useless in MWO.

Edit: Just read the latest Breakdown and they're making LRM's even more pointless. Who the hell is getting killed by LRM's to warrant the current anti-missile stuff never mind needing new ones?!

Edited by Wolfways, 31 January 2014 - 11:01 AM.

[Stuart Orland]

I know you're seeking to 'balance' clantech with IS tech, but... You know, some things were never ever supposed to be balanced.

Examples: The Gundams in Gundam 00. Eerily similar to the Battletech clan situation, the organization that made the Gundams go into hiding for 200 years and supercharge their technology. They come back 200 years later and end their secret development by unleashing their might on the world with nigh on unkillable super mechs. Same thing for the clans. Some things were never meant to be 'balanced' or 'fair'. Trying to balance them undermines everything they are and everything about the lore and the story.

Does that mean everyone will or should be using clan tech? Well, that's kind of the idea. Again to use the Gundam 00 analogy, the power blocks of the world were willing to throw away anything and sacrifice their best pilots to get even a fleck of paint off one of those Gundams to see how they worked and what they were made of. And once they did manage to get their hands on the tech, they all upgraded immediately and then put their own spin on it in due time. That's just how it works. Whatever gives you the edge. Besides, what better pleasure is there in getting that sophisticated clan tech and turning the enemies weapons they worked so hard to make on their creators? Just leave clan tech as is. Overpowered compared to IS tech, yes. But that's the way it's supposed to be.

I doubt you'll notice the feedback. I've noticed a bit of a trend that unless everyone and their dog gets angry enough to start defecating broken glass over an issue (such as with your $500 gold bling-bling mech shenanigans), you won't change it. Still, you are asking for feedback and here's mine, for whatever good or bad it does.

[Maverick3]

Since the Clan invasion was alien to the Inner Sphere it should be alien here as well.
My thoughts are totally simple yet a real thgouht so don't comment before you have read everything. DON't balance the equipment. Take em es they are canon from the source books. Let only 2 lances so 8 Mechs of Clans fight 12 IS mechs. It's how the Clans did it. They bet themselves down to lower numbers to gain more honor and exactly that would hapen here. Those who have Clan mechs will always fight with inferior numbers and gain more xp and money as they should get for that.
Clan Mechs will cost Horrendous manners of money to buy this will balance the Clans and you will only have to worry about the matchmaker.

Simple things work.

[Tex1013]

Maverick3, on 31 January 2014 - 03:32 PM, said:

Since the Clan invasion was alien to the Inner Sphere it should be alien here as well.
My thoughts are totally simple yet a real thgouht so don't comment before you have read everything. DON't balance the equipment. Take em es they are canon from the source books. Let only 2 lances so 8 Mechs of Clans fight 12 IS mechs. It's how the Clans did it. They bet themselves down to lower numbers to gain more honor and exactly that would hapen here.

I'm not sure you can say "exactly that will happen here" - you've got several different mindsets at work in Mechwarrior that could muddy the waters on this particular point...

1 - Faction Loyalty (clan v IS) - part of the fun of the clan invasion, was veteran players "taking sides" - some guys (like my friend Devin) will be a die-hard Clanner - he loved rules of engagements, and he *really* loved the better tech. And that was fine - like professional sports, a good healthy competitive rivalry can make a game much more exciting. Others love siding with that plucky underdog, the Inner sphere, and loved overcoming superior enemy mechs, tech and training through canny gameplay and proprietary techs like the good 'ol C3.

problem is, that at least currently, MWO doesn't have enough impact on the faction loyalty side to really make people "pick sides" - unless Community Warfare is a lot more involved, impactful and detailed than we've currently been led to believe, CW isn't going to make being a Davion, a Kuritan, or a Jade Falcon, any more distinctive than a particular win/loss box and a faction logo. There are no rules in place forcing zellbrigen, no rules for breaking zellbrigen, no mechanics in place rewarding via cbills, mc or whatever for a plucky IS overthrow of a clan force.

The inherent problem with *not* balancing the equipment, is that balancing combat by mech #'s alone (8 v 12, although clans operated in stars of 5, but that's neither here nor there) doesn't solve the most important issue - that with the introduction of clan gear, every NON clan piece of gear is now definitively, and significantly, inferior AND!!... there's no benefit to playing with the inferior gear. So far, we have no reason to believe that IS will gain greater cbill gains for defeating superior clan equipment. There's no indicator that there's any benefit at all to running with inferior gear, and as all the current MWO tangible rewards boil down to c-bills, there's no incentive to play at a disadvantage.

*not* balancing the weapons is not a wholly bad idea. However, retaining a difference between playing as a clanner and playing as IS requires far more significant game rewards and consequences than just c-bills, and so far, there's no indication that PGI is adding anything like that.

Maverick3, on 31 January 2014 - 03:32 PM, said:

Those who have Clan mechs will always fight with inferior numbers and gain more xp and money as they should get for that.
Clan Mechs will cost Horrendous manners of money to buy this will balance the Clans and you will only have to worry about the matchmaker.

Simple things work.

This part is just plain wrong. For one thing, Clans should absolutely NOT get MORE xp and money for playing with a numbers disadvantage with vastly better equipment. The whole point of *balance* is that the game would be ridiculously unfair if IS geared mechs had to go up against an equal # of clan tech mechs - so, at the absolute minimum, rewards should be equal in the above scenario.

The idea that money (cbill and/or mc) cost is *balance* is also dangerously naive. From an overall game experience viewpoint, you might be able to make that argument - but from a competitive argument, you cannot. If it takes me 20 weeks of game play to buy a dire wolf, and it only takes me 10 weeks to buy an Atlas ddc, the atlas ddc will (assuming clan tech v IS tech) still be violently disadvantaged in the field, because the matchmaker doesn't currently take into account the overall *cost* of the mech as a balancing factor.

or think of it this way - in any single match, 12 Dire wolves vs 12 atlas ddc's will probably clean the ddc's clock. sure, it took the dire wolf team twice as long to *get* their team together, but once they *are* put together, they dominate forever.

#'s balance is *a* balancing factor (ie the 8v12 argument, although not arranging clanners in stars of 5 is gonna annoy some people), but that *too* isn't really going to be enough, at least not consistently. You still have tonnage discrepencies, and the inevitable fact that the presence of clan tech skews the effectiveness of any single chassis depending on how they finally decide to implement clan tech.

And then you have the disparity between clanners using clan tech, and IS mechs with full-on clan tech. Now how do we balance it?

I'm telling you, as much as I appreciate the concept that keeping clan tech for clans and IS tech for IS and *NOT* skewing the clan tech #'s to *balance* is a good way to keep the flavor of clan v IS. The problem is, that to balance COMPETITIVELY, there HAS to be *either* a #'s change, OR a significant revamp to rewards and some dramatic impact on community warfare features.

and since I don't have any reason to believe that PGI is currently able to revamp the rewards system far enough to balance clan tech, it sounds like they're just going to skew #'s to balance out competitively in the short term, and that'll have to do.

[Taemien]

Maverick3, on 31 January 2014 - 03:32 PM, said:

Since the Clan invasion was alien to the Inner Sphere it should be alien here as well.
My thoughts are totally simple yet a real thgouht so don't comment before you have read everything. DON't balance the equipment. Take em es they are canon from the source books. Let only 2 lances so 8 Mechs of Clans fight 12 IS mechs. It's how the Clans did it. They bet themselves down to lower numbers to gain more honor and exactly that would hapen here. Those who have Clan mechs will always fight with inferior numbers and gain more xp and money as they should get for that.
Clan Mechs will cost Horrendous manners of money to buy this will balance the Clans and you will only have to worry about the matchmaker.

Simple things work.

Except that MWO isn't that simple. We have travel times on projectiles, heat scaling on multiple weapons of the same types, and different rules for construction (well not really,its just everyone's a hero instead of rank and file).

Implement Clan tech straight from canon, and you have toasted machines that would only be able to fire 2-3 weapons at a time. You'd need 12 Clanners for every 8 Inner Sphere. Superior tech just runs too hot.

Though I will say this, I like the idea of Clan tech being Alien. Clan Medium Lasers should function and fire differently than IS Medium Lasers. I think PGI should take what they are doing and go a step further. Make those 28 weapons totally new. Make it so that a Clan ER PPC and a IS ER PPC are only similar in name. Different ways to use them, different DPS, different colors of projectiles.

Make a IS player go "WTF is that?" when they first encounter it.

[Morgoth62]

Well I took the plunge and bought the Whole Enchilada. Can't wait to try these Mechs out! I have missed piloting a Timberwolf, Nova, Masakari, Diashi and Thor.

Guess I will have to try and get into Clan Wolf.

See you on the Battlefield.

thomas;)

[DrBunji]

I think you may be underestimating your fanbase if you think that a hike in the skill required to use the equipment is going to be a significant hurdle. Most likely just making them harder to use is not going to prevent an arms race.

Apart from that I think this looks thought through and pretty good.

But I am reserved since Ive been burned before, devs.

[syionide]

I like this except for the not being able to change armor type / distribution , heatsink location and number and the location of crit slots. as for previously promised things:

Command console: make a turret consumable and have it fire ant any enemy that comes near the command console is a module that allows you to set targets for it so it will fire on what you are targeting, this will A) allow for more tactical game play force those players to lock targets so as not to leave our LRM brothers in a hole and C) give purpose to the command console and adds additional content

VOIP: what is team speak, skype, ventrillo and mumble, forget it just add a overlay in the game that fits the style of the combat UI. when you drop with randoms you take a risk, dont complain if someone doesnt want to communicate, if you want communication, join a group.

LRM SRM Fixes: SRMs are dumb fire short range missiles theres nothing wrong with them the only thing that is wrong is your aim. LRMs are a different story there seems to be some weird registry with damage. i fire off 800 missiles and most of them hit and i only do 210 damage, please add a UI component that says something like 16/20 missiles hit and keeps count of total hit/total fired to keep a record of sorts.

UI 2.0: here in a couple days keep your panties on kids

Community warfare: good idea at first sight, dont know enough to say.

Balance: light mechs seem to be able to take alot of hits without dying unless they are standing still it seems that movement messes with hit boxes.

The Grind: we all kinda know that the grind is there to make buying MC an attractive option, but it pushes the game in a pay to win direction and its not good. money is to be spent on aesthetics like decals and colors and paint jobs not mechs.

Ghost heat defies the laws of physics, or so far as i have researched. remove it. plain and simple.

[Zarash]

If clan mechs come out then why not have it 8 Clan vs 12 IS or 10 Clan vs 12 IS to test out? There would be more of a balance because clan tech is better. I would not mind trying out an 8 vs 12 match or something similiar. I know player skill is a big factor, but I think it would be interesting and less complicated then having battle values. People could choose Clan or IS tech and choose what mech or loadout that they want to take per match.

Edited by Zarash, 01 February 2014 - 09:13 PM.

[Colonel Fubar]

TOGSolid, on 14 December 2013 - 02:19 PM, said:

So lemme get this straight, for a couple years it was a hard rule that tonnage would never be tampered with since it would break stock mechs and your brilliant idea is to up the LRM20's tonnage.Just exactly how much Mercury is in Canada's water?

LMAO

[Arbhall Sommers]

I really liked Taemeins comment about giving them all the weapons with all the stats presented in the TT keep it canon. But like the man with way more faith than me said. Make the weapons perform differently.
Charge times to fire like the gauss rifle is now.
Lock on times and more or less effect from ECM on lock on times.
Different flight times for missiles, different scatter for ballistics, and longer burn times for the lasers.
If you are going to change something, do something that needs changing.
Today I saw a 25 ton Spider, I was locked on so I saw its damage meter. Take 2 Hits at roughly 60meters, from an AC20 and the little ****** ran off. A follow up shot from a lancemate dispatched the Spider the poor little Cataphract couldnt swat.
If you guys at Piranah games have no problem with this, then there is no point saying anymore is there cause this isnt Battletech. You do have a lovely game that is loosely based on a game I love called Battletech.
2 hits!!! 40 damage!!! 2 full tons of armour plus a little, which is close to 10% of a Spiders total body weight. Impact damage, Gyro overload and pilot jarring, and the little **** just ran off with a blinking torso. You get it right blowing off his arm, but he should not have been another lancemates kill. Sorry but that has been bugging me all day.
Sorry I ramble a bit clan tech, make it canon. It is supposed to be better, you cant balance it. It is not supposed to be balanced, by design. Embrace that, dont fight it. Your charging enough for clan tech, make it worth the price, I wont play again till its free to play clan tech. Then its a clan game on an IS backdrop, just embrace it. That or wind the clock forward a few decades and make this game a Solaris pit fighter with clan tech.

[Zongoose]

The spider is actually a 30 ton mech and while I would love to see more direct impact from internal damaged on gyros, actuators etc I think it's unfair to expect another player to be one shotted because you think it fits the lore. Balance wise that spider still only took 3 shots to take down, anything less would have been ridiculous!

[wanderer]

Damage transfers at 50%- so if you shoot and it's an arm off, it's not going to rip the Spider in half. Plus, armor's effectively doubled (on any smart light, it's maximized), so one AC/20 hit to each side is just going to cause it serious damage, not killshot it.

And that's on purpose. Even with the extra armor, you can killshot a hit to the back in most cases for light, but it's designed so a single lucky blow isn't going to KO a scout out of a match. (Eating an alpha will, though.)

Two 20's to the CT would have wrecked it, though. Been there, seen that. That Spider was lucky enough to take it's medicine to first one side, then the other....and as you noted, strike 3 was "you're out".

[Taemien]

Problem you're seeing with Spiders taking two AC20 hits and trucking along isn't balance or game design, but rather a nasty bug with hit detection. Its a fault of CryTek when they made the engine. The issues we see in MWO were the exact same in MWLL which used CryEngine as well. The netcode is borked. PGI has to put in little tweaks to get it to work, but I doubt it will ever be smooth.

If I had my way, I'd have them scrap it all, and start over with a new engine. But they're too far along now.

[Arbhall Sommers]

Zongoose, on 02 February 2014 - 11:54 PM, said:

The spider is actually a 30 ton mech and while I would love to see more direct impact from internal damaged on gyros, actuators etc I think it's unfair to expect another player to be one shotted because you think it fits the lore. Balance wise that spider still only took 3 shots to take down, anything less would have been ridiculous!

I do not THINK it fits the lore. Its simple math. Location has x, successfull hit does y. x-y= z In this case meaning the location took more damage than it was capable of taking and it transferred to the internals. Im aware that the armour values have been doubled to account for the lack of the dice roll making it random. But even then it still stands the AC20 is more than capable of dealing that amount of damage to that amount of armour. If I was all up in arms about the lore Id be more upset that the melee combat mechanic is absent from the game on the cusp of the Clan invasion, a time when that vital technology was becoming extremely popular and available around the inner sphere. Is it unfair? yes a little. But that is why the AC20 is in the game, to one shot light mechs and deal enough damage to Assault mechs to make them less confident.
This ability however isnt unfair to light mechs. It puts them back in the fight just like in TT allowing them with an accurate shot to take down Heavies and sometimes even Assaults with a rear attack. Ive hunted Assaults with Locusts in TT, and done well at it. Clever level design and balance of turning factors on mechs makes more sense than nerfing a core mechanic like damage values.

Fairness aside, that Spider should have been one shot killed for a variety of reasons. It was wading into territory where Heavies and Assaults belong, close range combat against more than one mech 2-3 times its weight. Ballsy and brave but not the environ for that little guy. A scouts job is scouting, and spotting which I dont see all that much of by the way.
Where the hell is the game I was playing in closed beta for that matter? Where are the LRM boats? How come Lights are in melees brawling? What the hell!!!
Sorry for the rambling again.

Clan tech should be overpowered. It is superior in every way possible to IS tech, and these jokers want to bring parity to IS tech? Before they bring parity and balance to the gulf between IS and Clan they should wind the clock back a few decades of game time and call it the 4th Succession war and its a Draconis Invasion instead of a Clan invasion, since it will be less challenging to change names than it will be to code in melee weapons, balance Clan tech (dosnt even sound right) and still keep the Franchise rights after crapping all over them.

[Kohiro]

IMHO...

Take ghost heat off of IS weapons and only apply it on Clan mech / Clan weapons. That should balance it even if you follow the table top build of weaponry.

= IS mech can use the Clan weapons but still have to deal with the ghost heat of that Clan weapon they choose to use.
= 1 special module for the module slot is needed for the IS mech to even use the Clan mech weaponry.
= Clan mech pilots will always have to deal with ghost heat since clan weapons is all they can use.

[StreetPizza]

I hate you guys.
You can't even get the profiles to show right when people post on forums.
Proof the game is good even if you can't deploy it worth a crap.
great game god awful deployment.

[Po Tay Toe]

The number of mech designs to use is massive. If you played the table top you know how the game was unbalanced technologically by clan tech.. Also a bidding process was involved with the clan to designate the battlefield number of mechs. so a 4 clan vs 12inner sphere wouldn't be out of bounds.
But suffice to say the inner sphere mechs are numerous 2750-3058 mech types are numerous and should first be explored before any drop of clan tech.

[danielmongrain]

Thanks, great thread

[Rivit]

In Battletech TT/MechWarrior rpg the clans were out numbered. As far as lore is concerned, the clans would bid against each other to see who would get the missions and the clan who bid to do the job with the least amount of mechs was given the mission. Clans also use 5 mech formations called "Stars" instead of 4 mech "Lances". Would it be possible to just change the format of the drops instead of worrying about all of this rebalancing? What I mean is Since clans fought regularly with other clans have a game mode for simply clan vs clan. For the IS vs Clans have 2 star vs 4 lances or some thing like that. instead of reworking what the clans are meant to be. Its an easier solution to the balance issues and would allow the clan mechs to be OP with out wrecking the game and keep true to the Battletech/MechWarrior lore..