Jesus this thread.
You want to ignore things that cannot be ignored:
1) TTK
2) Clan vs IS balance: (the summoner vs the phract may be the best example of balanced like for like btwn factions we have so far).
3) 3/3/3/3 weight class team building and its massive flaws
Stop that.
You start with a 100% factual premise: No Endo no FF is going to make for a less powerful mech than one with Endo and FF unless the mech in question actually loses flexibility thanks to limited crit slots.
Thanks to Clan equipment being much more crit slot efficient and weight efficient a clan mech with Endo + FF gains a larger increase in power than an IS mech does going from standard/standard to Endo or Endo+FF.
In fact its a rare IS build that can deal with both upgrades and both upgrades plus XL is even more niche thanks to space considerations.
All of that is true. Its verifiable by anyone with eyes and a brain.
Then you draw some crazy conclusion that you can't and have not backed up, even in your pissing match with Mallan, who comes to the correct conclusion (don't make clan upgrades optional) but for 100% bad reasoning. TT lore cannot trump fun and balance in this video game.
Your new grasping at straws conclusion is that moving the SMN power level by giving it endo closer to the TBR and then nerfing clan weapon systems again to compensate is the right move. A better move than a pass through of negative chassis tweaks on the 3 remaining clan problem chassis.
1. Every nerf to clan weapons hurts mechs that don't need to be hurt (Clan lights for instance).
2. Another nerf to clan weapons interacts with a ton of interlocking systems. While hurting the TBR specifically with negative tweaks like was done to the Highlander or Victor does not. That makes weapon changes across the board more work and more likely to screw up unintended things.
3. Nerfing weapons again is much more damaging to player enjoyment than making the TBR a slightly less no brainer best mech in the game. We shouldn't even be aiming to make it NOT the best mech in the game. Hear me out. Some mech has to be the best. Its a 75 ton, very well designed clan mech that has crazy hardpoints and a crazy jump step animation for dodging. Its fine if that is the best mech for its tonnage. But it can be toned down and still be the best, which means its probably still too good.
4. The problem MWO continues to have is that by design these mechs are not meant to all be balanced with eachother. THE ENTIRE TONNAGE SYSTEM PREVENTS BALANCE. Basically to balance every mech within a weight class you would need to by design give all 80 ton assaults 20 tons worth of positive tweaks, all 25 ton mechs need 10 tons worth of positive tweaks, 40 ton mechs +15 in tweaks and so on. That's stupid and if that's how balance was going to be it should have been done that way from the start. Lets stop that right now and face the fact that our current matchmaking or teambuilding system whatever we're calling it is a huge part of our problem.
3/3/3/3 blind to all but weight class aka 35/55/75/100 is bad. Its bad for team composition variety. Its bad for giving all chassis a place in the game. It stifles gameplay, the more you are playing to win the more it stifles.
If we fix that we go a long way toward making a 60 or 65 ton clan heavy or a 40 ton clan medium usable. Even if they don't have endo.
Fixing the broken 35/55/75/100 system also helps all those 50 ton mediums we used to love, gives things like the Cicada an actual place in the game hopefully. Boosts the Awesome, which is quite good but for the fact that it isn't 100 tons and has hitboxes like a giant walking mattress.
Edited by Hoax415, 18 September 2014 - 06:21 AM.