Aresye, on 01 August 2014 - 03:02 PM, said:
Lowering the price for Clan mechs essentially devalues the equipment and weapons of Clan mechs below the prices of IS equipment, which doesn't make sense, considering they're overall better equipment and more rare on the market. Know how much Clan mechs were over IS mechs in MW2 Mercs? A LOT.
Imagine you're buying a house. You have 2 choices:
1. Decent house with no upgrades.
2. Better house with central air, heated tiles, in-ground pool, etc.
Yes, you can customize the decent house and pick the upgrades you want to save money, but the better house comes "as is." Just because you don't see the necessity of having an in-ground pool doesn't mean the property value should be lowered.
The Clans do have advantages. They aren't supposed to be equal to IS tech. They also frequently bid low for the forces to take over a planet, meaning balance issues for CW can simply be (and should be) compensated for by requiring Clan teams to field less numbers, such as 10v12 (2 stars vs 3 lances).
Really wish people would get over trying to balance everything 1-for-1. Mainly because it will never, ever happen. Besides, PGI has a knack for over-adjusting things. I would be lying if I said Clans were perfectly fine right now. They do need some adjustments. Thing is, those adjustments are small tweaks that need to be slowly honed in on.
I stay away from IS mechs now because they all feel nerfed. Every single one, down right miserable to pilot because they feel so incredibly useless after getting nerfed since closed beta, but they've felt that way even before Clans got released.
^This. Absolutely this. We should be readjusting IS mechs to make them more enjoyable to play in-line with Clans. Not nerfing Clans into the same uselessness as the IS mechs currently stand.
Here's the issue with Clan mechs -
By making them inherently 'better' in ways that literally can not be matched by Clans (Clan XL, endo and ff are in fact illusionary perks - because of locked format for engines, endo and FF all that really matters is available tonnage, slots and hardpoints to use that with) but more expensive you make them the superior meta. I get the concept of what you're saying - that Clan mechs should be expensive because of what they offer.
However there is no commensurate price reduction for their limitations. You can't remove or change FF, Endo or engine size. This is clearly a 'negative' to the design compared to IS mechs, but where's the cost savings there?
The issue comes back to making Community Warfare work. There needs to be a solid balance between Clan and IS mechs and equipment or else the player population will not be balanced, either in total population or skill distribution. If one faction is inherently superior but more expensive, clearly the 'elite upgrade' of the other factions, the result is not a balance of factions in a war but a ladder climb to join the elite faction.
This results in highest skill players in highest performance gear trouncing newbies. This can't really be balanced by '10 v 12' or whatever would result in a balanced format (more like 8 v 12 or even 5 v 12 if Clans essentially comprise all the best players and IS the newbies and a small handful of diehards) because you don't have a population split that puts the majority in the IS camp.
Instead what you've got is a situation custom designed to make it unenjoyable for new players.
So, to clarify - if CW is going to work and ever exist, Clans need to be balanced 1 for 1 against IS mechs, in performance, firepower, function and cost. You can give them different looks and feels but for equal skill (from nub to golden master race) they need balanced.
Otherwise you're sowing the seeds of failure into the foundation of the game. You need to player population to split not just in numbers but skill distribution as evenly as possible among not just IS and Clans but each IS house and each Clan. Nobody can start with an advantage in any regard, even if it's offset with 'skill requirements' or 'higher costs' because all that does is make it a status symbol of wealth and skill, ergo something to be taken in replacement of other things. An upgrade.
Make sense? If the game is never going to be other than exactly what it is now, no big deal I guess. It's all mixed deathmatches and the only difference between Clans and IS is cost to upgrade then sure. You create a ladder progression, start with IS trial mechs and work your way up to Clan tech gear.
You ever want CW though, that can't work.
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