60 replies to this topic

[NextGame]

SuckyJack, on 23 February 2014 - 10:40 PM, said:

I don't have a problem with UAC/40 Heavy/Assault Clan Mechs being more "BOOM" than the "BOOMJAGER" due to current UAC mechanics. I do have a problem when such "cheese" is locked behind a paywall for a period of time.

Sometimes I feel as though I'm the only person on the internet who is happy to pay for stuff that I want.

If you want one of these UAC/40etc mechs then you currently have the opportunity to buy one.

[Mordin Ashe]

Given how many people already invested into different clan packages I don't suppose players won't be capable of filling the matches.

Plus, if you don't feel like paying for something, simply don't do it and wait until its released for c-bills. If the game doesn't interest you without those Mechs chances are you won't stick around for long, much less give PGI some money. Yes, they probably should release clan Mechs sooner just for the sake of having at least one line up, it is their choice and you aren't in any way disadvantaged by their decision.

[Craig Steele]

Khobai, on 24 February 2014 - 01:15 AM, said:

I would hope everyone is disenchanted with the product by now.

Apparently not, they are still selling stuff and people are still playing. I get matches all the time.

Seems like their business model hasn't failed just yet?

[SweetJackal]

NextGame, on 24 February 2014 - 01:33 AM, said:

Sometimes I feel as though I'm the only person on the internet who is happy to pay for stuff that I want.

If you want one of these UAC/40etc mechs then you currently have the opportunity to buy one.

No, you're not the only person that is happy to buy what they want. Believe it or not, I do to! I invest heavy into the games that I enjoy to support the developer when they offer digital goods at a good value. Problem is I don't like buying gameplay affecting things, I'm more the person that you'll see buying camos and colors. The restriction on Chassis on those camo patterns keeps my wallet closed though, for that price I do not see a value. Nor do I regret my Overlord pack, I don't like that they missed the deadlines again at the Launch Event but I've been enjoying the Thuds and BLRs in addition to the SDH during the times when I am actually playing the game. Still waiting on a revisit of the cage that is the Locusts cockpit.

That said, one of the things that makes this game fair and balanced is that no one is barred from a weapon or build. The AC40 Jager is just an example, it has a specialized strong point where it can dominate an opponent but has a number of rather crippling weaknesses to go along with that. Yet if a player gets smashed by an AC40 Jager they can go ahead and aim to build one themselves, nothing is stopping them from doing so.

Locking out the majority of Clan ACs (Yes, the kitfox can mount ballistics but it doesn't have the crit spaces or tonnage to reasonably mount more than one 5 caliber or a 20 caliber, let alone pairing them with other weapons) would be as if the AC/20 was only available on mechs that were locked behind a paywall. Right now, even if a Hero trounces me and I am blaming a broken build used by that Hero I can generally match the weapon loadout of that Hero on another mech, maybe not perfectly but I can match the initial spirit of it's design.

For those that haven't bought into the Clan Collections they won't be able to do that. You cannot treat free players as second class players by giving an edge to your premium players, it is the free players that provide the bodies for the paying players to shoot and driving them away is a bad idea.

It's about Free Players having equal options to Paying Players in game. Being forced to buy into something to be able to fight on equal footing against other players is a horrible situation and provokes a further negative response from the playerbase.

Edited by SuckyJack, 24 February 2014 - 09:46 AM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

SuckyJack, on 24 February 2014 - 09:43 AM, said:

No, you're not the only person that is happy to buy what they want. Believe it or not, I do to! I invest heavy into the games that I enjoy to support the developer when they offer digital goods at a good value. Problem is I don't like buying gameplay affecting things, I'm more the person that you'll see buying camos and colors. The restriction on Chassis on those camo patterns keeps my wallet closed though, for that price I do not see a value. Nor do I regret my Overlord pack, I don't like that they missed the deadlines again at the Launch Event but I've been enjoying the Thuds and BLRs in addition to the SDH during the times when I am actually playing the game. Still waiting on a revisit of the cage that is the Locusts cockpit.

That said, one of the things that makes this game fair and balanced is that no one is barred from a weapon or build. The AC40 Jager is just an example, it has a specialized strong point where it can dominate an opponent but has a number of rather crippling weaknesses to go along with that. Yet if a player gets smashed by an AC40 Jager they can go ahead and aim to build one themselves, nothing is stopping them from doing so.

Locking out the majority of Clan ACs (Yes, the kitfox can mount ballistics but it doesn't have the crit spaces or tonnage to reasonably mount more than one 5 caliber or a 20 caliber, let alone pairing them with other weapons) would be as if the AC/20 was only available on mechs that were locked behind a paywall. Right now, even if a Hero trounces me and I am blaming a broken build used by that Hero I can generally match the weapon loadout of that Hero on another mech, maybe not perfectly but I can match the initial spirit of it's design.

For those that haven't bought into the Clan Collections they won't be able to do that. You cannot treat free players as second class players by giving an edge to your premium players, it is the free players that provide the bodies for the paying players to shoot and driving them away is a bad idea.

It's about Free Players having equal options to Paying Players in game. Being forced to buy into something to be able to fight on equal footing against other players is a horrible situation and provokes a further negative response from the playerbase.

Again, early access is one of the key conveniences that allow free to play games to monetize. In the case of the Clan packs, the rather long delay for the release of the higher-tier options is intended to give more value for the money for those who buy them.

[Khobai]

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Again, early access is one of the key conveniences that allow free to play games to monetize. In the case of the Clan packs, the rather long delay for the release of the higher-tier options is intended to give more value for the money for those who buy them.

I couldnt care less about early access. I dont need to pay money to feel special. I would rather have clans integrated properly into the game from day 1. Now were gonna have a mess of a game where theres not gonna be enough clan players for Clan vs IS matches and theyre going to have to mix Clan and IS on the same team.

I bought founders. I bought phoenix. And I wouldve bought a clan pack if it was marketed better. I dont at all agree with the pricing of clan mechs, the balancing of clan mechs, or the integration of clan mechs into the game. PGI has basically lost me as a paying customer.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Khobai, on 24 February 2014 - 10:36 AM, said:

I couldnt care less about early access. I dont need to pay money to feel special. I would rather have clans integrated properly into the game from day 1. Now were gonna have a mess of a game where theres not gonna be enough clan players for Clan vs IS matches and theyre going to have to mix Clan and IS on the same team.

I bought founders. I bought phoenix. And I wouldve bought a clan pack if it was marketed better. I dont at all agree with the pricing of clan mechs, the balancing of clan mechs, or the integration of clan mechs into the game. PGI has basically lost me as a paying customer.

If you don't care about early access, then don't pay for it. That's the fundamental relationship between vendor and consumer, and in the case of free to play, it's the people who do care about early access (among others, of course) who fund the servers and future game development.

I don't care about Clan mechs at all, except whether or not I can realistically kill them (I think PGI's Clan solutions so far have been pretty spot-on in that regard), but if I did I'd only buy a Clan pack if I really wanted the mechs early (or if the ancillary bonuses were sufficiently enticing).

[Josef Nader]

You know you're going to cave just like you did with Founders and Phoenix. People raise a big fuss because they want as much free stuff as possible. All PGI needs to do is stick to its guns and you and all the players like you will cave and pay them. You want to play Clan tech too badly to wait several months after everyone else has their shiny new toys to play.

It's how monetization works. It sucks. Deal with it.

[Khobai]

Quote

You know you're going to cave just like you did with Founders and Phoenix.

If clan mechs were implemented properly I probably wouldve caved. But im definitely not buying a clan pack if clan mechs and IS mechs are going to be equal. Because thats not battletech or mechwarrior.

[Roadkill]

ROFL. Not enough Clan players to fill in matches? You're from Colorado or Washington, right?

The people buying the Clan packs right now are the hard-core players who will be online all the time as soon as they're allowed to drop in their shiny new Clan Mechs. I don't foresee any problems getting enough Clan Mechs to create matches - even they heavier ones that are only accessible via MC payment to start with.

And all you people drooling over the 2 x UAC/20 Daishi... you're doing it wrong. That Mech isn't all that scary. Try 4 x UAC/10 instead.

[Josef Nader]

Oh hush. Nobody wants to play a game where one set of weapons is so completely superior that there's no reason to use anything else. If Clan tech was totally superior to IS tech nobody, and I mean nobody but the most hardcore roleplayers, would play IS. Then we'd have exactly the same problem we'd have now, where everyone has rushed to the same meta builds and it becomes an arms race, only now the arms race has made 80% of the game's content obsolete.

Clans and IS being balanced against each other is better for everyone. Besides, clan tech isn't even getting nerfed that hard.

[cSand]

[Khobai]

Quote

If Clan tech was totally superior to IS tech nobody, and I mean nobody but the most hardcore roleplayers, would play IS.

I disagree. Theres plenty of ways to balance superior clan tech. 10v12. battlevalue. A bidding system. clans not sharing sensor info. etc...

[CCC Dober]

Agreed. Clan Mechs need to be available in all flavors from the get go (Light, Medium, Heavy and Assault). Even if it's just one Mech per category. Otherwise the game becomes pay to win by definition.

As for the weapons situation, I think it pays to draw inspiration from past games. MW4 introduced IS weapons that were not accessible to Clan Mechs in a pure tech setting. Those were quite heavy hitters and even borderline OP because the Clans usually had no direct counter, such as Arrow IV and Artillery in all flavors. The range and versatility of the Light Gauss Rifle was something that gave the Inner Sphere an edge in the long range department, which turned the tables on the Clan ER PPC. Rotary Autocannons were equally game changing, especially in large numbers.

The long and short of it is that both Clan and IS eventually have access to weapons that are unique and very powerful. The longer it takes to close the gap between them, the harder it becomes to balance the tech disparities. Given that the official timeline has been seemingly abandoned, it is no longer a problem to introduce weapons that level the playing field. Regardless of whether they have been invented or not. This is a compromise that I would be more than willing to accept in order to preserve the playability of the game.

Given my experiences with Trial Mechs and custom Mechs, I don't think that numerical superiority with inferior Mechs is going to facilitate interesting games when IS and Clan Mechs are crossing swords. The only exception would be when the IS forces were on par with Starleague era tech. Comstar Mechs were capable of pulling wins against Clan Mechs, which is the kind of initial balance I would shoot for in the beginning, if I was PGI.

[Josef Nader]

Khobai, on 24 February 2014 - 11:03 AM, said:

I disagree. Theres plenty of ways to balance superior clan tech. 10v12. battlevalue. A bidding system. clans not sharing sensor info. etc...

No, there really isn't.

10v12? The IS mechs still get ground like beef before they can get into range, especially in pugs. Remember, in pugs, every man is an army, and a murderball of 4-5 clan mechs rolling around would chew pugs faster than a pizza at a fat camp.

Battlevalue doesn't work for this game. The AC/2's battle value is only 37 (less than the medium laser's 46, yet they're one of the most potent weapons systems in the game). Even with modified values, people would still find ways to cheat the system and come up with ludicrously powerful builds. Plus, you'd just end up with huge BV teams vs huge BV teams, especially if no one is playing lower BV mechs. PLUS, higher BV items aren't nessicarily better, and including BV in the equation would make them highly undesireable (the LB10X is 146 BV. That's more than 4 AC2s and their ammo combined.) I understand you'd tweak the values, but even then the system really doesn't do a whole lot of anything for balancing. This isn't tabletop. We can't carefully construct our unit composition and we aren't stuck playing with stock mechs.

Honor doesn't matter. Clan players would bid as high as possible and roflstomp the other team. Other incentives are secondary to people's W/L and KDR. Even if you offered money and XP awards for bidding lower, top level players with mastered mechs won't care about the higher rewards, and would just steamroll everything. Plus, do you -really- want to wait for several minutes prior to a match while everyone bids? Screw that, I just want to get in the game.

Clans not sharing sensor info? Jebus, that's even worse. Now pug players have zero method of sharing information beyond slowly typing it into chat. Teamspeak players will not be facing this limitation, and they will completely ruin everything in front of them.

No, there really isn't any other way to put clantech into this game and not invalidate IS tech. IS tech needs to stay competitive on every skill tier or you completely nullify half the content and the Clan invasion will turn into the Clan Civil War as clan mechs are the only things on the field.

[GalaxyBluestar]

SuckyJack, on 24 February 2014 - 09:43 AM, said:

That said, one of the things that makes this game fair and balanced is that no one is barred from a weapon or build.

yen-lo-wang says hi!

it's obvious that's your an meta humper with the engender that there'll be some months when you can't meta up unless you pay. don't worry keep whining in threads like these and i'm sure pgi will halve uac ammo and double the ghost heat and throw in some special arbitary never-explained-in-game rules or ecm for ballistics equipment because you cry foul.

remember the list of nerfs we have and could get.

fixed engine values
fixed slots through endo and FF
ghost heat
extended cooldowns
no TT value damage nerf it down
no TT value heat nerf it to boiling hot
stagger fire missles
could have no radar sharing
tonnage limits
stars vs lances numbers meaning more chance to be steamrolled
less modules than IS mechs
halved ammo
halved mechtree perks including cool containment, speedtweek and extra torso movement acceleration etc
could easily be 3x more expensive so the grind to level up is trippled
although endo and ff are fixed there will be an omni pod tax via swapping hardpoints

of course clans need some nerfing and the IS already have mechs of uber power through the wonky heat system {DHS boating} and all the modules, customisation and mech tree perks that improve them from TT value exponentially. but pgi could easily do alll those clan nerf because of people like the OP saying they want it all now and breaking the game isn't enough to satisfy him.

clans will be poor. the crit and tonnage will be the only perks they'll have {and that's only because the devs can't break stock advertised loadouts otherwise we'd gett raising tonnage and crit values too} really it's hardely worth the money, stop crying for your meta hump jager, it won't be outclassed.

Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 24 February 2014 - 04:01 PM.

[Butane9000]

They want to give more value to those who choose to spend real money by releasing each mech one at a time. Seems like a non "P2W" solution to me.

[Elkfire]

NextGame, on 24 February 2014 - 01:33 AM, said:

Sometimes I feel as though I'm the only person on the internet who is happy to pay for stuff that I want.

If you want one of these UAC/40etc mechs then you currently have the opportunity to buy one.

Normally I'd agree with you, but given PGI's unreliability I'm worried MWO won't last, and with it goes anything you spent money on. I'd buy the Stormcrow a la carte if I had more confidence in the developers, but I'd rather not throw more money at a product that could very well be circling the drain.

Edited by Elkfire, 24 February 2014 - 08:53 PM.

[NextGame]

Elkfire, on 24 February 2014 - 08:51 PM, said:

Normally I'd agree with you, but given PGI's unreliability I'm worried MWO won't last, and with it goes anything you spent money on. I'd buy the Stormcrow a la carte if I had more confidence in the developers, but I'd rather not throw more money at a product that could very well be circling the drain.

I think that's a fair enough choice, but its a personal decision that people have to make and in doing so should be comfortable in accepting that if they don't want to buy stuff they will have to wait for the cbill variants.

[That Guy]

am I the only one who thinks that clan tech should not be usable by IS players at all? well they have all those pre-orders, and they have to deliver on the product... so damn.