26 replies to this topic

[Dirty Starfish]

I feel like the people with enough clan mechs to play CW are more likely to have bought their mechs in packs than IS players. This means that those clan players are more likely to be playing with mastered mechs then an IS pug with four mech bays. As a result, when your average pug in his basic level IS mechs come up against them, the clans seem OP.

Personally, I think the chassis are pretty well balanced to start with, but if you have one side fully leveled and moduled out the ass and one side full of "newb mechs", so to speak, then players might feel that clans are OP.

Obviously IS 12 mans are exempt, but due to the relative expense of clan mechs, I would also expect to see more pugs on the IS side, which would lead to this effect being so prominent and would also lead to the "clans are OP" threads on this forum.

Thoughts?

Edited by Serial Peacemaker, 22 December 2014 - 12:34 PM.

[Kirkland Langue]

So the game is Pay 2 Win?

It doesn't matter whether you argue that Clans are OP - or that the bonus for using cash to get ahead leads to the discrepancy, those with the Clans are going to cry foul.

My opinion is that IS has stronger Lights, Clans have stronger everything else - but if the IS uses their lights to win, it becomes cheesy.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Most of it is based on Lore. Clan mechs were OPed in Lore and TT so it is obvious despite all the balancing that PGI has done that they are OP here or at least that is the psychology behind it.

Also due to how new the Clans are, the cost in C-bills to own them and the fact that 5 out of 13 of them aren't available for C-bills yet, you have alot of "Have nots" that are extremely jealous they don't have them.

Finally you have CW and the fact that you only get to see things from one side of the fence so when IS PUGs lose to the Clans it is perceived as having nothing to do with CW game mode design or lack of skill on their part because obviously the Clan mechs are OPed. What they don't realize is Clan PUGs are having the exact same issues but when Clanner try to tell them this, they dismiss it as lies or Clanners trying to protect their OP mechs.

Basically it is no win scenerio and all Clanner can do it try to endure it and hope PGI doesn't succumb to the whinny masses and screw with are darn near "underpowered" mechs any more than they have. (And believe me many are Underpowered, hell most of them except Timber Wolf, Stormcrow, Hellbringer and Direwolf)

Edited by Viktor Drake, 22 December 2014 - 01:13 PM.

[Brody319]

give everyone a free Koshi and the Clans are OP threads will stop.

[vamrat]

My experience of Clam Wars is thus -

I played three games in one night with a competant IS team. Most fo the guys were in a seven/eight-mech (give or take) group, my friends and I were in a pair and play well with others, plus two randoms (give or take) who were not dead weight. We rocked the Clams twice - defend and counterattack, then barely lost the last one. All subsuquent games were with teams that had at best a smattering of competant, organized players, and the rest...yeah. The majority of the canner groups I have faced were highly competant, almost all members had the same unit tags (leading me to believe they were 8 to 12 man units), and spammed chickens and puppies with the odd whale, hellbringer, and masochistic summoner.

Coordination seems to be the big thing. Any apparant OP-ishness of the Clams is probably due to the front-loading of their best mechs. In the two we won, we were able to cut them down to the point where mop up was easy with all the backloaded cute foxes.

One tactic that seemed very viable for them was to rush head long to the objectives, ignoring casualties, to unload on the generators and omega gun. The chickens and puppies have enough HP and armour to take more killing then we could put out. One loss (in one of the more competant pug groups) I did 1000 dmg in my first drop 'phract, and truth be told, I kinda suck at this compared to many I have seen. It did no good, because they were able to hit the Omega before we could kill enough of them. The pattern I have been seeing is that when they attack they just wade through the fire and dispatch the offending objectives, or on counterattack we just get killed going in. The couple times we were able to coordinate enough to zerg together it just became a shooting gallery with us as the little yellow duckies.

As for how to fix this, I will defer to greater minds. I haven't won enough as IS to form a balanced opinion on the strengths and weaknesses of the Clan to determine if they are OP or not, all things being equal. (Also, I have played very few trial clan mechs, let alone own any.) If I can get some more wins at some point I might be able to identify where any imbalances might lay.

TL;DR - annecdotes.

[JimboFBX]

I think it has more to do with alpha strikes of 8 lasers, especially when you can do it 3 times in succession then hide knowing you can't be flanked. The IS mechs clanners seem to be bitching about are the ones with bunch of energy hardpoints.

Also, the stormcrow is so thin it messes with weapon convergence and becomes hard to hit when moving.

And timber/storm legs are so far apart and thin its easy to shoot between them

And most people dont have the cheeze mechs of IS because they are the newer ones but people who bought the timber wolf package have all the cheese they need.

Edited by JimboFBX, 22 December 2014 - 01:50 PM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

vamrat, on 22 December 2014 - 01:33 PM, said:

My experience of Clam Wars is thus -

I played three games in one night with a competant IS team. Most fo the guys were in a seven/eight-mech (give or take) group, my friends and I were in a pair and play well with others, plus two randoms (give or take) who were not dead weight. We rocked the Clams twice - defend and counterattack, then barely lost the last one. All subsuquent games were with teams that had at best a smattering of competant, organized players, and the rest...yeah. The majority of the canner groups I have faced were highly competant, almost all members had the same unit tags (leading me to believe they were 8 to 12 man units), and spammed chickens and puppies with the odd whale, hellbringer, and masochistic summoner.

Coordination seems to be the big thing. Any apparant OP-ishness of the Clams is probably due to the front-loading of their best mechs. In the two we won, we were able to cut them down to the point where mop up was easy with all the backloaded cute foxes.

One tactic that seemed very viable for them was to rush head long to the objectives, ignoring casualties, to unload on the generators and omega gun. The chickens and puppies have enough HP and armour to take more killing then we could put out. One loss (in one of the more competant pug groups) I did 1000 dmg in my first drop 'phract, and truth be told, I kinda suck at this compared to many I have seen. It did no good, because they were able to hit the Omega before we could kill enough of them. The pattern I have been seeing is that when they attack they just wade through the fire and dispatch the offending objectives, or on counterattack we just get killed going in. The couple times we were able to coordinate enough to zerg together it just became a shooting gallery with us as the little yellow duckies.

As for how to fix this, I will defer to greater minds. I haven't won enough as IS to form a balanced opinion on the strengths and weaknesses of the Clan to determine if they are OP or not, all things being equal. (Also, I have played very few trial clan mechs, let alone own any.) If I can get some more wins at some point I might be able to identify where any imbalances might lay.

TL;DR - annecdotes.

Pretty adequately describes the situation actually although it is worth noting that the Zerg works just as well for IS mechs as it does Clan mechs with the exception that the IS can do it faster with an all light rush than Clans can do it with chickens and crows if they chose that route. That can still rush heavy if they want, it just might take 3 waves instead of 2 due to IS being a bit slower when they rush heavies.

[NadeMagnet]

"Possible reason for "op Clans" threads" It's simple. So many people are ******* that have zero idea that a 100% balanced game is nightmarishly boring as hell. 100% balanced means 12 mechs vs 12 identical mechs. Gee how fun... Clans have range. That's it. Get over it already and stop engaging clan at ranges greater then 800-1000. Any clanner inside 800 is just another hunk of salvage to me. Except the whale of coarse. Learn not to blunder into the front of it and it too is just an easy as hell to hit hunk of salvage. Like the whale should come with a default skin with bullseyes all over it.
Recognize that it's far more fun to win against a superior opponent. Like wining my first attacking CW match felt good. Winning against a clan felt even better. Winning against a 12 man premade clan team and we were over half pug was awesome. Because we made a plan an executed it. For those of us who have been gaming since long before VoIP existed you're just breaking my heart that CW requires you to chat especially on the attacking side. Get over it and make a plan.

I've been playing PC games since freaking DOS. I remember being proud of being in a family with one of the first AOL accounts out of most of the people I knew in school. I own god knows how many hundreds of PC games. Never before have I come across a bigger community of whiners then I have then MWO. Seriously. No other game has come close. Granted PGI has made it just oh so easy but my god. It's like a version of reverse fanboys. Like when EA won the as the worst company around. Nope no bandwagon going on there.... Ya EA is worst company around.... Not those that pay no taxes or jack up things or the countless other examples of corporate or industrial BS. No a video game company is the worst. Makes perfect sense. Do you people even hear yourselves?

Stop whining. Shoot faces

[cSand]

People just cry cause they can't have easy mode victories handed on a silver platter

[Sandpit]

Because some just need a scapegoat and boogeyman.
It's always something
ALWAYS
Without fail. Since OB really

[psihius]

I didn't play that much yet, around 10 games or something, but I already recognized one of the patterns clan defenders are using after those games, and we, unintentionally, brought a counter to it from the get go. Well, it just folded the way it did historically, just the way most of our unit plays and my own stubbornness to bring certain mech's in to my personal deck. First wave was though, second wasn't easy too, but we pushed them back deep into their base with heavy losses on our side and kill score was kind'a depressing, guys almost gave up. But with the third wave we actually did catastrophic damage to their defence and the respawns they got where just murdered like 4 to 1, the last 8 mech's where a turkey shoot of "who will get the kill".
Well, you probably guessed that it is related to the drop deck and how they are using it. But i'm not sharing it openly, because I plan on using it against the clanners

People just tend to not think strategically and long term - like "we had 10 battles, we learned stuff, next 10-20 battles we are testing this and this and we can make these and these changes if necessary".
Did we had our asses handed on a silver platter on occasion? Sure. Did we learn something from it and made plans? Well, at least I did. And I have a sneaky suspicion some clan ases will be served. On a golden platter

Edited by psihius, 22 December 2014 - 08:25 PM.

[Cragger]

Viktor Drake, on 22 December 2014 - 01:10 PM, said:

Most of it is based on Lore. Clan mechs were OPed in Lore and TT so it is obvious despite all the balancing that PGI has done that they are OP here or at least that is the psychology behind it.

Also due to how new the Clans are, the cost in C-bills to own them and the fact that 5 out of 13 of them aren't available for C-bills yet, you have alot of "Have nots" that are extremely jealous they don't have them.

Finally you have CW and the fact that you only get to see things from one side of the fence so when IS PUGs lose to the Clans it is perceived as having nothing to do with CW game mode design or lack of skill on their part because obviously the Clan mechs are OPed. What they don't realize is Clan PUGs are having the exact same issues but when Clanner try to tell them this, they dismiss it as lies or Clanners trying to protect their OP mechs.

Basically it is no win scenerio and all Clanner can do it try to endure it and hope PGI doesn't succumb to the whinny masses and screw with are darn near "underpowered" mechs any more than they have. (And believe me many are Underpowered, hell most of them except Timber Wolf, Stormcrow, Hellbringer and Direwolf)

I will say this, and don't take it as a personal attack for it isn't. Using the Lore card is null and void in MWO. Why, well because using the Lore card to justify the bonuses of better technology. While not also acknowledging and accepting the negatives that the clans bound themselves to during the opening years of the invasion. That being of the use of minimal force required, no targeting of supply, no damaging of infrastructure and support, and (most importantly in the realm of MWO) never engaging an engaged opponent unless he was already violating this rule.

The invading clans did not start to shed their honor code and adopt more total warfare tactics until the IS was already beginning to respond with improvements to their technology.

But here is the real crux. Coding in the technology advantage of the clans is easy for a fps game. But how in the hell do you code in the honor code that balanced out that advantage. One can even argue the clans wouldn't even have been a threat to the IS at all with the honor code if they didn't have a technology advantage.

Anyway the real problem right now is that the clan (players) in CW are almost totally composed of max skill perks and module equipped 8/12 mans versus IS generally consisting of scattered randoms. I don't think I've ever seen anything less then a 8man unit in the games I've played versus clan.

I did just play a game versus a 12 man SOL unit and I actually want to give them gratitude for going for a slow slugging match to allow the PUG IS to actually be capable of handling them. They only resorted to rushing the points when time was running low. But critically they allowed their opponents to have fun (honor) instead of just steam rolling them which they could have. That is the true clan way, respecting ones opponents.

[Chagatay]

At one time, I would agree that clans were indeed OP and behind a paywall. But this time has since past, the clans have since been repeatly hit with massive nerfs in the form of burning alive in their cockpits from all the damned heat. IS has lots of very good mechs (looking at you improved T-BOLT etc) .

[Alex Warden]

WEEELL... if you ask me,part of the problem is that the perception is off, between clans and is...

the clan mechs usually perform on a level equal to a higher (IS)weightclass ...meaning, jobs that the IS perform with 12 assault and heavy mechs, the clans use Timbers, crows and hellbringers for...

thats due to the original design of "more, lighter and colder weapons", the bare nature of the clan tech...

with exception of the few mechs that PGI intentionally nerfed (or better, limited) via "bad omnipods", the clan mechs and technology themselves are much better than the IS equivalent... even if PGI would make all weapons equal damage and range wise, the clans would still have the advantage of more weapons in most cases...

on the other hand, the clans currently have just 3 assault mechs that are not really better than IS ones, except for the brutal weapon platform that the DWF is... but it´s so immobile that it´s only a threat if you run into it accidently..

so in reality the Timbers and hellbringers compete with IS assaults and upper-level heavies, while the Crows compete with IS heavies...

if you compare them all to their "own category", they seem OP, indeed...

(btw: that´s exactly what i was saying long before PGI actually released their design plans for clanners last year...no one would believe it ...)

Edited by Alex Warden, 22 December 2014 - 09:36 PM.

[Aresye]

The Lords, while abrasive, are still one of the best teams in the entire game, and even with Clan mechs, it isn't like they can easily mop up another good team like 228. Some matches they've had the past few days have been insanely close.

It's less about the tools, and more about the team.

[Bagor Aga]

I give plus to thou who said Clans are mostly organized and experienced units. Many of us are BT fanas for years and encouraged to fight on clantech. The fact we purchased packs means we were motivated and kept the mood. Experience is another big power. We have brother FRR unit we fought under one tag before CW. I would say they know for sure what CT worth and they do pretty well now.
So, there are things to improve in motivation for cooperation, add more e-honor in competition on top of planet claims to collect IS attention for perfection.

Edited by Bagor Aga, 22 December 2014 - 11:03 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Brody319, on 22 December 2014 - 01:31 PM, said:

give everyone a free Koshi and the Clans are OP threads will stop.

Not everyone. Please it would ruin my all Inner Sphere Mechbay!

[NextGame]

Serial Peacemaker, on 22 December 2014 - 12:28 PM, said:

I feel like the people with enough clan mechs to play CW are more likely to have bought their mechs in packs than IS players. This means that those clan players are more likely to be playing with mastered mechs then an IS pug with four mech bays. As a result, when your average pug in his basic level IS mechs come up against them, the clans seem OP.

Personally, I think the chassis are pretty well balanced to start with, but if you have one side fully leveled and moduled out the ass and one side full of "newb mechs", so to speak, then players might feel that clans are OP.

Obviously IS 12 mans are exempt, but due to the relative expense of clan mechs, I would also expect to see more pugs on the IS side, which would lead to this effect being so prominent and would also lead to the "clans are OP" threads on this forum.

Thoughts?

Don't really think so, I've not really had any problems winning consistently against the clams even when dropping solo (sure, a loss here and there happens, but...). Semi-Protip - Popping a Stormcrows leg is as satisfying as popping bubblewrap.

New players at the moment are coming in, playing the trial mechs, and picking up timber wolves, so if anything there is probably more new player representation on the clams than you think.

Edited by NextGame, 23 December 2014 - 04:24 AM.

[Caustic Canid]

Cragger, on 22 December 2014 - 08:57 PM, said:

I will say this, and don't take it as a personal attack for it isn't. Using the Lore card is null and void in MWO. Why, well because using the Lore card to justify the bonuses of better technology. While not also acknowledging and accepting the negatives that the clans bound themselves to during the opening years of the invasion. That being of the use of minimal force required, no targeting of supply, no damaging of infrastructure and support, and (most importantly in the realm of MWO) never engaging an engaged opponent unless he was already violating this rule.

The invading clans did not start to shed their honor code and adopt more total warfare tactics until the IS was already beginning to respond with improvements to their technology.

But here is the real crux. Coding in the technology advantage of the clans is easy for a fps game. But how in the hell do you code in the honor code that balanced out that advantage. One can even argue the clans wouldn't even have been a threat to the IS at all with the honor code if they didn't have a technology advantage.

Anyway the real problem right now is that the clan (players) in CW are almost totally composed of max skill perks and module equipped 8/12 mans versus IS generally consisting of scattered randoms. I don't think I've ever seen anything less then a 8man unit in the games I've played versus clan.

I did just play a game versus a 12 man SOL unit and I actually want to give them gratitude for going for a slow slugging match to allow the PUG IS to actually be capable of handling them. They only resorted to rushing the points when time was running low. But critically they allowed their opponents to have fun (honor) instead of just steam rolling them which they could have. That is the true clan way, respecting ones opponents.

I agree with you, though it could be said that we threw lore out the window before clans were even announced when we allowed I.S. 'mechs to be modified to the degree they are. Sure, it happened occasionally in cannon, but the vast majority of pilots were riding around in 'mechs the way they came from the factory.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

The reason for the "clan op" threads is because Clan mechs do have an edge. Specifically the weight savings + durability of a Clan XL engine. Throw in trolls and the fact that this is the internet and people frequently vent when they're sore about stuff and you have your reason.

Lets just hope PGI goes about the by giving stuff to the IS to counter balance the Clan advantage instead of further nerfs to Clans; we've already seen some Clan mechs become unusable and then receive quirks to attempt to correct those problems. (Nova)