503 replies to this topic

[Durahl]

Can we all agree that we usually buy stuff when things are on sale because... well... cheaper?

Why not be a LOT cheaper in general if this is what makes the masses run towards your store?

Not just that. What ticks me off the most is their pricing politics when it Comes to MC > Bonus XP conversion. The less MC you decide to buy the less you get for your Money and the less you buy the less Bonus XP you can buy as well which too scales better the more you buy in-game thus screwing you twice.

I totally call BS on that kind of pricing politics... There's no excuse for doing it like that.

[Odanan]

Rubidiy, on 19 May 2014 - 01:36 AM, said:

should be the dumbest game mode ever. Considering no respawn is gonna be there, free-for-all means "stay low and finish off those who just fought properly".

It could be very interesting if players were pitted in duels, while the other players wait.

[Odanan]

VigilanceHawkwind, on 18 May 2014 - 07:16 PM, said:

There's a thread documenting what has been said by PGI and what has not regarding clan weapons. TBH I feel we still have insufficient information and likely will continue to have insufficient information until release date. My last post addressed poptart meta and my feelings that, even at canon values, the clan mechs are no stronger, if not at a significant disadvantage to IS poptarts. 2AC5 + 2PPC > 1Gauss + 1CERPPC. If you are comparing the mobile pop tart mechs. The clan assaults are another question of course but I think it's important to understand that nothing under an assault tier can mount any configuration superior than what the IS can do under the current meta.

One of the guys in my unit, clan, whatever, brought up a good point: from the looks of things (compiled from everything PGI has stated), the clan mechs may end up dominating the brawling game while the long range game is the domain of the IS.

Do you realize 2x IS AC/5 + 2x IS PPC weight much more and occupy more room than 2x Clan AC/5 + 2x Clan ER PPC?
You and you friend are delusional.

[Pariah Devalis]

Odanan, on 19 May 2014 - 04:03 AM, said:

Do you realize 2x IS AC/5 + 2x IS PPC weight much more and occupy more room than 2x Clan AC/5 + 2x Clan ER PPC?
You and you friend are delusional.

With Clan tech: 2 UAC5 (or, rather, 2 LBX5 because it will be better for poptarting), 4 tons of ammo, 2 ERPPC comes out to 30 tons minimum required, not including the additional DHS you really should be taking to cool that second ERPPC. I suppose you could go 1 LB10X and 2 ERPPC, with 3 tons of ammo, but that is still 25 tons. WIth insufficient heat sinks.

Summoner only has, after you FIX the armor issue on it, 22.5 tons of room. Timber Wolf only has 27.5 tons of room stock, but you can reduce the armor a hair to bring it to 28 tons. Nova only has around 21 tons of room. Etc. Omnipods or not, there are hard limits that Clan mechs need to deal with in available tonnage due to their massive engines.

If we go poptart meta, the Nova with 18 DHS and 2 ERPPC and the Summoner, using a Delta Configuration's arms, can pack 2 ERPPC, 2 ERMLas, and 21 DHS. Both of those have a 30 point primary weapon strike. The Summoner just has the mediums for backup as they are poor for poptarting purposes.

I keep stressing this: People really need to take some time and look at how a Clan mech is built before opening their mouths too wide. There are concerns, yes, but honestly the concern should be "why are IS mechs so damned modifiable?"

Edit:

For the record, if someone can successfully build a Clan mech with this overwhelming firepower people are concerned of in the heavy and medium bracket, go ahead. Please, I beg of you, post it. I certainly have not found the way to make a "meta mech" that is any better than what we currently have. Equal to, yes, better, no. So I beg you, prove me wrong.

(Non-meta, OTOH, you can tool up as expected. 60+ Alphas on heavies and mediums is entirely doable, but these lean on beams or missiles to do so.)

Edited by Pariah Devalis, 19 May 2014 - 04:51 AM.

[Cavendish]

loliza, on 19 May 2014 - 01:24 AM, said:

Lol clanwars launching how come i still just dont give a f'''' oh i know because u took too long and still you are gonna cash in on clan wars for 2 months before letting "free" players get a hold on it LOL

I dont think CW means what you think it does.

[NoClass]

Sir Roland MXIII, on 18 May 2014 - 08:21 PM, said:

Vigilance, I think I can agree with what you're saying, for two reasons. First, it's fair to say that damage, rate of fire, and other details than weight and slots can curtail Clan superiority, but my point was that lighter weapons mean more of them, or larger / heavier weapons per mech. Second, am I completely certain? No of course not, and honestly I would prefer to be wrong.

However, history with PGI however has taught me to expect any "worse case" scenario out of the possible existing scenarios, often adjusting downward to where PGI ends up. Pay2win is worst case here, and as I said I would love to be wrong, but... <shrug>

I mean, really: keep in mind that clan weapons' development is being overseen by someone who abstained from using DHS on a dual Gauss K2, and instead used 19 SHS.

Indeed, however, the way omnipods are being implemented forces hard point limits on the amount of weapons these mechs can Mount. Given what we know from the horse's mouth, clan mechs are essentially "build your own variant" as opposed to omni mechs where the only limitations besides tonnage are critical slots. If this is the way shits going to be implemented, boating clan tech looks less frightful.

[Raggedyman]

On the downside: I have to wait several more months before (maybe) buying a clan-lite mech

On the upside: the wealthy canaries early adoptors will have paid to beta-test everything so whatever I get should be in better working condition when I get around to trying it.

Still no news on what the MC or CBill prices will be, which is either an approach to get more people to pay in advance or something PGI/IGP haven't worked out as they don't know what the take up rates will be.

[Pariah Devalis]

VigilanceHawkwind, on 19 May 2014 - 05:06 AM, said:

Indeed, however, the way omnipods are being implemented forces hard point limits on the amount of weapons these mechs can Mount. Given what we know from the horse's mouth, clan mechs are essentially "build your own variant" as opposed to omni mechs where the only limitations besides tonnage are critical slots. If this is the way shits going to be implemented, boating clan tech looks less frightful.

That, plus the hard tonnage limits in place from the fixed engines are far smaller than most people realize. Gun for gun, ton for ton, the Clan tech might be better, but if the weight savings on a per weapon basis are nullified by the weight cost of the engine, which is huge in most of them, than it ends up a wash. Which very much seems to be the case. I mean, look at some of the release mechs, or the Gargoyle and Executioner assault mechs which are not released. Available tonnage for clan mechs is typically between 20 and 30 tons, which is less than a typical Cataphract's available tonnage of around 40 tons.

Whatever weight advantage you might get ends up lost or severely reduced.

Edited by Pariah Devalis, 19 May 2014 - 05:16 AM.

[NoClass]

Odanan, on 19 May 2014 - 04:03 AM, said:

Do you realize 2x IS AC/5 + 2x IS PPC weight much more and occupy more room than 2x Clan AC/5 + 2x Clan ER PPC?
You and you friend are delusional.

The Clan Ultra AC5 weighs 7 tons. The CERPPC weighs 6 Tons. To mount both of those you need 26 tons. Not including ~4 tons for ammo. You need about 15 double heatsinks for regular PPCs and realistically, 18 for the heat Generated by ERPPCs. The Summoner is fixed with a 350XL engine and FIVE jump jets. It's armor value is already low for its class. Do the math and tell me if the Thor can realistically Mount those weapons.

Hint: It can't.

It's advisable to do research before you decide to call someone names.

Edited by VigilanceHawkwind, 19 May 2014 - 05:52 AM.

[Appogee]

Rubidiy, on 19 May 2014 - 01:36 AM, said:

Should be the dumbest game mode ever. Considering no respawn is gonna be there, free-for-all means "stay low and finish off those who just fought properly".

Yep.



Aff.

[NoClass]

Pariah Devalis, on 19 May 2014 - 05:11 AM, said:

That, plus the hard tonnage limits in place from the fixed engines are far smaller than most people realize. Gun for gun, ton for ton, the Clan tech might be better, but if the weight savings on a per weapon basis are nullified by the weight cost of the engine, which is huge in most of them, than it ends up a wash. Which very much seems to be the case. I mean, look at some of the release mechs, or the Gargoyle and Executioner assault mechs which are not released. Available tonnage for clan mechs is typically between 20 and 30 tons, which is less than a typical Cataphract's available tonnage of around 40 tons.

Whatever weight advantage you might get ends up lost or severely reduced.

Exactly. On the grounds of what is top tier, right now, the clan mechs LOOK like they cannot compete. Given the available tonnage, large engine size and relatively good armor, the clan mechs appear poised to brawl. Which would be a refreshing change of pace.

[Appogee]

Pariah Devalis, on 19 May 2014 - 05:11 AM, said:

Whatever weight advantage you might get ends up lost or severely reduced.

Yep. I think there's a very real risk that Clan Mechs will be under-powered vs IS Mechs. The engine and CT limitations are quite severe. I don't think the superior weapons will compensate for them.

In any case, I've signed up for $240 of them, so I guess I will find out in 6 weeks from now.

[Mister Blastman]

Cavendish, on 18 May 2014 - 10:17 PM, said:

I just have to correct somethings here, and I hope I dont come over as a troll.

That $60 price you see on a box? The game company does not get all that money. If they are lucky they get half, and this is rare. The retail store gets its share, the transport, printing, pressing and so on also costs money. Even if its a digital download the "store" takes its cut to provide the game and host the files (unless we talk about "garage-sale" operations that sell Steam codes, but even there Steam is charging the game company for the hosting).

You also present cases of games where, at most, the game company provide a matching server. MWO is not Peer-to Peer like CoD, MW2-4 or Darksouls, MWO is running on PGIs servers which costs a lot more then some meger matchmaking for P2P.

Look at the Battlefield series for example, they mix their own servers with public (rentable) ones, and charge you for every map-pack, bling-bling weapon-pack and so on. Thats a boxed game you buy, but you have to keep buying packs for this and that to get access to the new stuff (does this sound familiar?).

MWO dont charge you for the game, and in theory you could just decide that you love one mech model and never have to spend a dime on it. Maps are free, a selection of colours are availible for in-game currency, all gear you can put into a mech is likewise availible if you want to "grind" for it.

I think you misunderstood my post.

Player-hosted servers means PGI does NOT host the servers we play on. The players do. In fact, this is common terminology in the gaming industry. I said that for a reason. Because I realize how much it costs to run servers.

If you buy a game through Steam, the developer keeps 70%. Steam takes a 30% cut. That 50% figure is really old news. Retail for selling computer games died five years ago.

[XxXAbsolutZeroXxX]

Durahl, on 19 May 2014 - 01:48 AM, said:

Can we all agree that we usually buy stuff when things are on sale because... well... cheaper?

Why not be a LOT cheaper in general if this is what makes the masses run towards your store?

Not just that. What ticks me off the most is their pricing politics when it Comes to MC > Bonus XP conversion. The less MC you decide to buy the less you get for your Money and the less you buy the less Bonus XP you can buy as well which too scales better the more you buy in-game thus screwing you twice.

I totally call BS on that kind of pricing politics... There's no excuse for doing it like that.

I think, Champion mechs in the 50% off sale come standard with XL engine. (GXP conversion is also doubled.)

http://mwomercs.com/...puted-champions

Its cheaper to buy a 50% off champion mech and sell its XL engine for cbills, than to directly convert MC -> c bills.

Decent way to stick-it-to-the-man / PGI?

.

Edited by I Zeratul I, 19 May 2014 - 08:37 AM.

[Shikata nai]

Depending on the actual Variants the Thor could potentially be a very nice Mech in the current Meta. If they choose Variants that allow one-sided Builds with like 2 ER PPCs and an LBX / UAC you can remove enough armor on the other side to get in what you want. I'm also curious if all Jumpjets are fixed or only the ones in the centertorso since this is the variantdefining part iirc.

Bottomline is: We dont know anything until Variants are revealed since they are a necessary part in the big picture concerning viability of chassis. Can go either way...

[Odanan]

VigilanceHawkwind, on 19 May 2014 - 05:41 AM, said:

The Clan Ultra AC5 weighs 7 tons. The CERPPC weighs 6 Tons. To mount both of those you need 26 tons. Not including ~4 tons for ammo. You need about 15 double heatsinks for regular PPCs and realistically, 18 for the heat Generated by ERPPCs. The Summoner is fixed with a 350XL engine and FIVE jump jets. It's armor value is already low for its class. Do the math and tell me if the Thor can realistically Mount those weapons.

Hint: It can't.

It's advisable to do research before you decide to call someone names.

I'm not talking about the Summoner or the smaller mechs. I'm more worried with the Timber Wolf, Warhawk and (specially) the Direwolf.

[Pariah Devalis]

In that case, the Timber Wolf is still shy on tonnage to use 2xERPPC and 2xLB5X. Warhawk could manage it, potentially. The problem is the combination of the four guns on a jump capable platform, neither of which are. The Direwolf, I would be more concerned about 2xlb10x, 2xerppc setups, but the Dire Wolf is going to be a known beast anyways. Still not jump capable and slower than dirt.

[Runs With Scissors]

just a heads up to those concerned about pricing on clan mechs.

By TT rules pricing both on engines are partly determined by the mechs weight. For example the cost of an XL engine for a catapult would be: 20000 X (engine rating) X (Weight of mech: 65) then divide that by 75.

Naturally with all of us being able to swap engines between mechs this pricing scheme cant work. Instead of having the exact weight of each mech included in the cost of each engine they split the difference and substituted it with 50 for ALL engines. (example: 20000 X (engine rating) X 50 then divided by 75 )

What this means for clan mechs is that the engine costs for larger mechs (Thor, Madcat, Masakari) will end up being less because they weigh more than 50 tons while mechs smaller than 50 tons might actually cost MORE.

This might account for price discrepancies found in mechs like the Atlas-K. It has a 300XL engine that costs a lot less than it should for a mech that size.

On a side note the cost of the mechs gyro in TT was engine rating divided by 100 then rounded UP and multipled by 300,000. It seems in MWO they just took the rounding end of it out so most gyros are actually cheaper.

[NoClass]

Odanan, on 19 May 2014 - 09:46 AM, said:

I'm not talking about the Summoner or the smaller mechs. I'm more worried with the Timber Wolf, Warhawk and (specially) the Direwolf.

You quoted my post which specifically addresses the pop tart meta.

[Mystere]

Durahl, on 19 May 2014 - 01:48 AM, said:

Can we all agree that we usually buy stuff when things are on sale because... well... cheaper?

Why not be a LOT cheaper in general if this is what makes the masses run towards your store?

Not just that. What ticks me off the most is their pricing politics when it Comes to MC > Bonus XP conversion. The less MC you decide to buy the less you get for your Money and the less you buy the less Bonus XP you can buy as well which too scales better the more you buy in-game thus screwing you twice.

I totally call BS on that kind of pricing politics... There's no excuse for doing it like that.

Do you realize that in the retail world, the "original" prices you see in those sale items may never have been real in the first place?