23 replies to this topic

[Lefty Lucy]

One of the biggest problems with the Clan Invasion is that right now MWO does not have Clans.

We have Clan Mechs, but the Clans themselves are not simply better tech and a forum tag.

The Clans are represented by the following aspects that have nothing to do with technology:

1. Zellbrigen. I'm under no assumption that Clans always fought mano-a-mano duels until the last Warrior was standing. In fact Clan Wolf (among others) was particularly infamous for throwing Zell out the window as soon as it was convenient/advantageous. However Batchall and Zellbrigen is still at the heart of Clan Warrior society.

2. A huge emphasis on personal accomplishment over teamwork. Clan pilots gain rank not by proving that they're effective commanders, but by proving that they're better than the guy/girl above them in a duel. This hinders the Clans as much as it helps them, as it leads to a very Darwinian command structure where those with rank are not necessarily good at leadership, just good at combat.

3. An almost religious aversion to waste (especially the Bears!). Even though they had better tech, the invasion Clans would salvage IS tech and send it back to the second line warriors. This also plays into point 2, where they would send Warriors who failed to the second lines as well, and it was considered to be a mark of shame.

4. A reverence for the Battlemech (and to a lesser degree Aerospace) over all other forms of combat.

In order to give a "true" invasion experience without watering down the Clans too far, I think we could use these concepts to give playing a Clan mech an experience that makes you feel as though you're playing a Clan pilot as well.

Some changes that I think would represent these aspects of Clan warfare:

• Clans don't get airstrikes or arty. No true Clan warrior would ask a lowly infantryman for artillery assistance, and they would be similarly adverse to an Aerospace Warrior taking the glory of their kill. Instead they would get a consumable Air Defense module that could intercept and prevent airstrikes, or even suppress arty strikes for a time after a round of artillery lands ("Air support: please find and suppress enemy artillery, we have incoming rounds on our position"), maybe double the team arty cooldown? Triple?
  
• Clans get no rewards for assists: only kills.
  
• If your mech gets destroyed in a match, you're required to play a lighter weight class until you get a kill. Die in your Direwolf? Play a Timber until you can prove yourself again. Still can't do it? Hope you enjoy your lights for a bit.
  
• A big bonus to Salvage earnings on victory. They make the most of it.
  
• A penalty (or perhaps even removal?) of the ability for Clans to fire LRMs indirect. This could be coupled with removing their soft min-range entirely.
  
• An ability to tag specific enemy mechs as your target, and awards/penalties for either killing it, failing to kill it, or killing someone else's tagged target while your team mate is alive.

Just as a start I think implementing things like this could give us the feeling of having actual Clans in the game. Any other ideas?

[Khobai]

Quote

A huge emphasis on personal accomplishment over teamwork.

Conversely IS mechs should get equipment which buffs teammates. Command Console and Master C3 could basically provide the same bonuses as clan targeting computers to allied IS mechs.

Command Console should give its bonuses to all friendly IS mechs within a certain distance.

And the Master C3 could be 5 tons and 5 crits, and come with integrated tag, and give the equivalent of a level 2 targeting computer to all friendly IS mechs in the same lance.

Edited by Khobai, 09 August 2014 - 11:38 AM.

[Lefty Lucy]

Khobai, on 09 August 2014 - 11:37 AM, said:

Conversely IS mechs should get equipment which buffs teammates. Command Console and Master C3 could basically provide the same bonuses as clan targeting computers to allied IS mechs.

Command Console should give its bonuses to all friendly IS mechs within a certain distance.

And the Master C3 could be 5 tons and 5 crits, and come with integrated tag, and give the equivalent of a level 2 targeting computer to all friendly IS mechs in the same lance.

Yeah, more stuff like that.

Of course a side effect might be that Clans are the masters of the Solo Queue, and the IS dominates the group queue because of an emphasis on teamwork.

Hell, this is all pie-in-the sky type of dreaming anyways. PGI will just continue to adjust weapon values as normal.

[Sug]

Maybe if people that played BT had developed this game instead of people that occasionally check Sarna.net for some fluff to post.

[SolasTau]

And y'know, that might not solve all the problems, but it would actually put stakes in the game.

After all, you can't raise the stakes when there aren't any.

[Wolfways]

I like it all except:

Lefty Lucy, on 09 August 2014 - 11:35 AM, said:

If your mech gets destroyed in a match, you're required to play a lighter weight class until you get a kill. Die in your Direwolf? Play a Timber until you can prove yourself again. Still can't do it? Hope you enjoy your lights for a bit.

No ******* way am i going to be forced to play mechs i do not like.

[Lefty Lucy]

Wolfways, on 09 August 2014 - 12:13 PM, said:

I like it all except:


No ******* way am i going to be forced to play mechs i do not like.

Eh, yeah, I figure people wouldn't like this, but honestly it would be one of the most gentle ways to "role play" how the Clans view failure.

If we were to go hardcore Clan roleplay mode your account would be erased

[Capt Sternn]

We need Vehicles. Ya the IS gets 12 mechs and 4 support vehicles. Shrekk PPC Carriers, SRM Hover tanks, Scout vehicles, and VTOLs would be awesome.

[Lefty Lucy]

Capt Sternn, on 09 August 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

We need Vehicles. Ya the IS gets 12 mechs and 4 support vehicles. Shrekk PPC Carriers, SRM Hover tanks, Scout vehicles, and VTOLs would be awesome.

Yeah, I bet we'd get some tank jocks back in the game who've moved over to Warthunder if we did it right too.

[Capt Sternn]

Hmmmm and even some vehicle only battle for fun. OH GOD I would so drive a tank on soem of these maps

[A banana in the tailpipe]

Lefty Lucy, on 09 August 2014 - 11:35 AM, said:

2. A huge emphasis on personal accomplishment over teamwork. Clan pilots gain rank not by proving that they're effective commanders, but by proving that they're better than the guy/girl above them in a duel. This hinders the Clans as much as it helps them, as it leads to a very Darwinian command structure where those with rank are not necessarily good at leadership, just good at combat.

You described a major reason why I called it quits on Delta Galaxy despite some cool people there. Guys like myself are just here to experience MWO for the fun of playing the game win or lose. As the clan grew, participation was no longer good enough until some of the brass would chew you out for goofing around even in casual drops. If constantly having to prove yourself to the same group of people night after night is your thing, be my guest and you'll love clans. If you're getting too old for that kinda crap and just want to play... stick to soloing imo.

[Rick Rawlings]

No, you can't have any of that stuff, because that would be interesting, and apparently you are not allowed to do anything but destroy enemy robots over and over...and over..and over again. Oh, and mine some Unobtainium every now and again. Look, even if someone has some good ideas that I don't particularly like, I would get behind them just to have some ambition in this darned game. Imagine if there was a base at some random location on a big jungle map and one team had to defend while the other attacked and while all the fighting was going on, the attacking scouts could sneak in and target all the enemy assets in the base for a large c-bill and xp reward. Jeez, do something, PGI...

[Gruffleen]

I 2nd, 3rd and 4th all of the above. I was a founder though I left way back and am just now coming back to the game; its good to see much of the breadth there is now, and some additional maps. Some cool, new, interesting and even optional ways to play would be groovy.

A hardcore mode of some sort would be great (not that I'd get beyond 2 battles); pick a mech, every battle you survive you get a small perk. Hit 10 wins and you get your name up in lights or some such. An offensive/defensive battle would be great, as a huge amount of Battletech lore is about attacking or defending a particular spot. 8 mechs and 6 turrets vs. 3 lances or something. I'm definitely not one of those where everything has to be perfectly balanced or the sky is falling; I play to have fun, and the more the game can immerse me in the FEEL of Battletech, the longer I'll stay.

[Sug]

Capt Sternn, on 09 August 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

We need Vehicles. Ya the IS gets 12 mechs and 4 support vehicles. Shrekk PPC Carriers, SRM Hover tanks, Scout vehicles, and VTOLs would be awesome.

I wouldn't mind a game mode that's a first person version of a tower defense game like LoL/Dota that uses vehicles as creeps.

[Alistair Winter]

Lefty Lucy, on 09 August 2014 - 11:35 AM, said:

Some changes that I think would represent these aspects of Clan warfare:

• Clans don't get airstrikes or arty. No true Clan warrior would ask a lowly infantryman for artillery assistance, and they would be similarly adverse to an Aerospace Warrior taking the glory of their kill. Instead they would get a consumable Air Defense module that could intercept and prevent airstrikes, or even suppress arty strikes for a time after a round of artillery lands ("Air support: please find and suppress enemy artillery, we have incoming rounds on our position"), maybe double the team arty cooldown? Triple?
  
• Clans get no rewards for assists: only kills.
  
• If your mech gets destroyed in a match, you're required to play a lighter weight class until you get a kill. Die in your Direwolf? Play a Timber until you can prove yourself again. Still can't do it? Hope you enjoy your lights for a bit.
  
• A big bonus to Salvage earnings on victory. They make the most of it.
  
• A penalty (or perhaps even removal?) of the ability for Clans to fire LRMs indirect. This could be coupled with removing their soft min-range entirely.
  
• An ability to tag specific enemy mechs as your target, and awards/penalties for either killing it, failing to kill it, or killing someone else's tagged target while your team mate is alive.

Just as a start I think implementing things like this could give us the feeling of having actual Clans in the game. Any other ideas?

I really like the spirit of this post. I think it's possible to do a lot of stuff like this, without necessarily making gameplay less fun. I don't know the lore well enough to make more suggestions, but I would really like to see a system that encourages zellbrigen.

Right now, the HUD on an Inner Sphere mech will tell you what mechs are not targeted (empty red square), and what mechs are already targeted (solid red square). You could do something similar, but more visible with Clan HUD. For example, a mech already targeted would have some sort of symbol with negative connotations, like 'access denied' or even a big X inside the target box.

However, I will say this about Clans vs Inner Sphere, and every other gameplay issue.

Manipulating meta-game factors like C-bills and XP does not solve gameplay issues

It's the same reason why artillery & airstrike or coolshots are a terrible idea. Saying that it's balanced because it eliminates profits is moronic, when a large portion of the players don't care about neither C-bills nor XP, at all. So if you want to encourage a certain type of gameplay by changing meta-game factors, you should know that it won't have any effect at all, on a large number of players.

If you want to limit focus fire or indirect fire, you need to actually change how the weapon systems work.

Also, one more thing:

Lefty Lucy, on 09 August 2014 - 11:35 AM, said:

• If your mech gets destroyed in a match, you're required to play a lighter weight class until you get a kill. Die in your Direwolf? Play a Timber until you can prove yourself again. Still can't do it? Hope you enjoy your lights for a bit.

This is something I've wanted to see for ages, but only for Stock mech mode. It's like CounterStrike. You start out with a pistol. If you do well, you get an MP5 in the next match. Then maybe an AK-47. Then finally the AWP rifle. If you die, you go back to having a pistol or MP5.

For this to work, you need to make some extreme changes. First of all, it only works if all players have access to all mechs. Second of all, you need a separate type of economy, like in CS, where you only have the money you've earned since you logged on that session. And you can only earn so much money, so you can never save enough money to buy another AWP rifle if you lose your first one.

Currently, it would not work in MWO, because some Clan players may only have bought the Dire Wolf a la carte. So if they die, and can't play the Dire Wolf... then what are they gonna do? Twiddle their thumbs while some 5 minute cooldown ticks down?

Since this is only a meta-game feature anyway (it wouldn't matter, say, in a tournament match), you may as well solve the problem by R&R and punish Clanners extra hard, even taking into account that their mechs are more expensive already.

EDIT: Formatting posts on this forum is even more buggy than making changes in the Mechlab.

Edited by Alistair Winter, 09 August 2014 - 02:08 PM.

[Lefty Lucy]

Alistair Winter, on 09 August 2014 - 02:07 PM, said:

I really like the spirit of this post. I think it's possible to do a lot of stuff like this, without necessarily making gameplay less fun.

Yeah, I'm not exactly attached to my specific ideas. I'd just love to see more brainstorming. Stuff that can add fun, lore-based RP, and a real sense of belonging to a unique faction. Hell, it's not even anything super ambitious, Star Craft has had super-unique factions for decades.

[Khobai]

Quite frankly 12v10 alone wont balance clans one bit.

Because it just means 2 less clan lights. Theyll still have 3 daishis and 3 madcats.

Unless they enforce 3/3/2/2 for clans. but then youd have absurdly long queue times.

Edited by Khobai, 10 August 2014 - 02:52 AM.

[EvilCow]

Khobai, on 10 August 2014 - 02:27 AM, said:

Quite frankly 12v10 alone wont balance clans one bit.

Because it just means 2 less clan lights. Theyll still have 3 daishis and 3 madcats.

Unless they enforce 3/3/2/2 for clans. but then youd have absurdly long queue times.

I think 10vs12 will work, 3-3-2-2 is actually a good idea too.

On top of 10vs12 faction-specific restrictions could be enforced as proposed in the above posts.

[EvilCow]

Another idea, clan warriors could have an option to launch a challenge.

If launched to another clanner then the challenged would be bound to accept, the winner would receive a score bonus if the kill has been scored with at least 70% damage.

A challenge to IS player would work for the challenger only, the IS player would get a bonus for not being killed by the challenger

[keith]

heres a problem clans really did not follow zell vs IS, because IS broke zell on clans so all out war broke lose.