17 replies to this topic

[Cementi]

I have joined with a merc unit for two reasons.

#1. They are really great people.

#2. Im an alt addict.

So for me it is the best of both worlds as I get to experiance both the Clans and IS mechs in CW so figured I would try and put out an opinion on balance that is (I would like to think) less biased than most.

I have heard both sides of the fence when it goes to who is overpowered and who is underpowered and the truth is I think neither side holds any water. The problem is not faction balance but chassis balance. Both sides have their over achievers and naturally that is all you are going to see on a meta build team......which frankly is boring as hell. Probally why 12 days into my second Clan Contract I am allready bored of dropping in stormcrows and hellbringers (I know its hersay but I like the hellbringer over the timberwolf). When I ran an IS contract it was the same thing but with Thunderbolts and firestarters. With all the choices IS had it is sad to see that is what it has devolved into.

For me I noticed that when clan's first came out the balance was not too bad. A bit skewed towards Clan but considering the Clan mechs designs all giving them giant hit boxes it felt fairly balanced with the exception of the Stormcrow and Timberwolf.

IS quirks were a solid addition. My only problem is that they often didnt shore up issues a chassis had but pigeon holed them into running a specific loadout. My Quickdraw 5k is one of my favorites but I dont run PPC's on it and never will (new quirks coming for it and I am rather happy about that). Alt addict bias there as that is the bread and butter of how I play fiddling with new builds. I think this is where the Quirks failed they focused too much on weapon systems an I think they would have better served to have focused on surviveability type quirks the the origional Vindicator quirks. Loved that thing it felt beefy for a medium till they ripped them out and added yet another chassis to have ppc quirks. General quirks are great, I wouldnt mind seeing specific quirks being options in a chassis skill tree system instead of the ones we have. IE you could choose a quirk that buffed your ppc on a vindicator or buff an ac 5 to allow you to tailor a mech to your play style but taking that choice away from the player is silly. I know people say that you can still run whatever you want......but can you really? Honestly run a sub optimal build and be ready to hear the noob comments fly in all chat when they get a target lock.

Clan Wave 2 was a complete Dud with the exception of the hellbringer which I am a fan off but even it suffers from giant hit box syndrome. The only reason I have success with the hellbringer is I have stopped putting weapons in the arms. Some will point out some exceptions saying well look the myst lynx is basicly the same size as the commando so they got those right. Wrong, its arms are pumped up on mech steroids which is really bad for a 25 ton mech with no armor and nothing but arm mounted weapons. It is a super fun mech to pilot.

For Is you look at the Chassis and no light can compare to the firestarter. No medium can compare to the firestarter or the thunderbolt (wubervine comes close). No heavy can compare to the thunderbolt. There are a couple of assaults that find roles but mostly as meat shields so that the thunderbolts can do their work.

For clan no light can compare to the Stormcrow. No medium can compare to the stormcrow. No heavy can compare to the Timberwolf. No assault can compare to the timberwolf. Even justifying them as meat shields is tough as the warhawk has bigger hit boxes and only a few tons more armor and the dire wolf is simply too slow to lead a charge.

Now look at cross faction. No light IS or Clan can compare with the Firestarter. No medium IS or Clan can compete with the Stormcrow. No heavies can compare with either the Thunderbolt or Timberwolf. No assault can compare to the Timberwolf.

So the problem is a game with 44 different chassis, some with variants that play radically different styles than the rest of the chassis, has devolved into the same 4 chassis being played and nothing else. Even if you add in the situational 1 or 2 IS assults, the odd wubbervine and the hellbringer that brings us to a whopping 8 options out of 44.

So there rage away at how I am wrong and Clan is op, no wait IS is op, or maybe its just the Timberwolf, then again the over quirked 9S is op, however I forgot about the doomcrow, oh and then there is the firestarter........it goes on.

Both factions have their OP bulls#!^. I say enough with the offensive quirks. Ideally I would like them stripped out as this games biggest issue is alpha strikes. That is why we are saddled with a crippling heat scale, double heat sinks that out side of the engine do not work as double, and ghost heat. Three functions that do not add fun to the game. They recognized this, though they wont admit it as you see the majority of mechs have heat generation reduction quirks, would have been easier to admit the mistake and fix the other three issues. Defensive quirks are great. They shore up weak points on mechs ie giant hit boxes like the hunchbacks hunch, the dragons nose and the awesome wide load sign. Offensive quirks do nothing for these issues but do help a chassis in exploiting those issues on another mech making balance much harder to achieve.

Let us go back to what we think is the best weapon for a mech as I for one am sick of seeing PPC quirks everywhere. Some Clan mech's need their quirks as badly as IS mechs did. Lets get on that instead of this endless buff nerf cylce that has been going onwith IS mechs forever. I would love to play something other than the top 4 chassis.

[Jonathan Paine]

A good while back, I made myself a clan alt to do some chassis testing. Prior to the quirks, my conclusion was pretty simple: the worst clan mechs were as good as the better IS mechs. Post quirk the IS have two mechs that are competitive with clans: TDR (9S, 5SS pre-nerf) and the WVR 6K (honorable mention to the stupidly quirked AC Dragon). Both these mechs will be hit by the nerf bat, and we will be back to Clan overall having the better mechs, particularly in CW.

As for the usual "Firestarter is OP" argument, just stick a bunch of streaks on the clan lights and learn to stick around your team. "POP" goes the Firestarter.

[Aresye]

Jonathan Paine, on 14 February 2015 - 12:03 PM, said:

As for the usual "Firestarter is OP" argument, just stick a bunch of streaks on the clan lights and learn to stick around your team. "POP" goes the Firestarter.

Invalid argument.

A single Clan light (even with streaks) is going to lose against a Firestarter running any of the top 3 loadouts. You can't bring the team into the equation to say it's balanced. If that were the case, then Timberwolves are no problem, because all you have to do is stick on a bunch of ERPPCs on a Thunderbolt and stick with the team. Yeah...no s***. By your logic, no mech is OP, because no mech can stand up to a full team comprised of multiple mechs that are effective counters to the mech in question.

[Cementi]

Remove the top 3 chassis from each side and suddenly things are pretty balanced. It is too bad we cannot do CW as private matches to see what it would be like without those mechs.

[GreyGhost]

I like what the OP has to say. I'd love to see the quirks rethought from the ground up.

ANY heat related quirk is going to make a mech that boats that weapon OP. SOME weapon quirks make sense, like the AC20 quirk on the AC20 hunchback, or a medium laser quirk on the laser hunch. ER-PPC heat quirks on the Tbolt should have been a red flag right off the bat.
PGI's game engineering feels like Rube Goldberg. Ghost heat to get rid of PPC boating, minimum range to get rid of PPC boating. ER PPCs with big heat so you can still use'm close up, but at a heat cost. Jumpjet nerfs to get rid of jump jet PPC boating. Leg damage to get rid of jump jet PPC boating. AND ALL OF THIS with heatsinks that don't work at full numbers.

Then........AFTER THAT.... "Here's a purpose built ER-PPC boat that runs super cool and has it's hardpoints super high so you can hill hump almost as well as the poptarts could poptart!" AND it can mount two AMS is the missile boats can't touch it.

Uh..........WHAT?

[Lily from animove]

Cementi, on 14 February 2015 - 12:26 PM, said:

Remove the top 3 chassis from each side and suddenly things are pretty balanced. It is too bad we cannot do CW as private matches to see what it would be like without those mechs.

the sad truth, but the uproar if no TBR, DWF and SCR would exist xD anyways would be an interesting experiment for a week tbh.

[Livewyr]

Cementi, on 14 February 2015 - 12:26 PM, said:

Remove the top 3 chassis from each side and suddenly things are pretty balanced. It is too bad we cannot do CW as private matches to see what it would be like without those mechs.

There would just be a new top three...

(And Clans would have even fewer options to choose from than they do now.)

[Pragr]

I have to agree with Cementi's first post. Though I have relatively few experience in CW (about 30 battles so far) I'm a bit disappointed of the uniformity of drops. It seems like the 3 Stormcrows plus one Hellbringer/Direwolf is the only setup for most battles (with exception of pugs in some battles). The Thunderbolts 9S on the IS side is another good example.

But what frustrates me even more is absolutely no diversity in roles. Lights are used for quick rushes only. Do you have light without jump jets? Sorry for you, you choose wrong chassis. Scouting is limited to checking which gate enemy use for attack. The only other means of recon are UAVs. NARC has no use in the heavy ECM environment. TAGing is even more useless since TAG laser has short range and it's visible. Why there is a medium class of mechs I have absolutely no idea. Why there are any other weapons except ER PPC I have no idea. According to last few days, why there are any other weapons except the LRMs on the clan side I have no idea (with a huge bonus of making the game so laggy that laser/ballistics are next to useless).

On the other hand, how to get off this situation that's the million dollars question.

[Caustic Canid]

I'm aware we're out of beta, but the main reason half the mechs (especially the clan ones) are considered OP is because of the heat-scale we have that does little to represent the heat-scale mechanism of the TT.

Seeing 'mechs capable of multiple 40-50 heat alphas with no negative effects is at least a bit telling.

The laser vomit Timberwolves, min maxed as they are, would still be suffering movement penalties (and +1 to hit, though we aren't allowed to talk about dice rolls here on the forum because reasons) on their first alpha.

[Yokaiko]

Caustic Canid, on 16 February 2015 - 12:51 PM, said:

I'm aware we're out of beta, but the main reason half the mechs (especially the clan ones) are considered OP is because of the heat-scale we have that does little to represent the heat-scale mechanism of the TT.

Seeing 'mechs capable of multiple 40-50 heat alphas with no negative effects is at least a bit telling.

The laser vomit Timberwolves, min maxed as they are, would still be suffering movement penalties (and +1 to hit, though we aren't allowed to talk about dice rolls here on the forum because reasons) on their first alpha.

They would gain 8 heat per cycle (more if running and jumping)

[Revis Volek]

Lily from animove, on 14 February 2015 - 10:55 PM, said:

the sad truth, but the uproar if no TBR, DWF and SCR would exist xD anyways would be an interesting experiment for a week tbh.

I would just switch to my BETTER performers in CW....

Which is my MDD-A, MDD-B, HBR-A or B and My WHK's.

Pragr, on 16 February 2015 - 04:24 AM, said:

I have to agree with Cementi's first post. Though I have relatively few experience in CW (about 30 battles so far) I'm a bit disappointed of the uniformity of drops. It seems like the 3 Stormcrows plus one Hellbringer/Direwolf is the only setup for most battles (with exception of pugs in some battles). The Thunderbolts 9S on the IS side is another good example.

But what frustrates me even more is absolutely no diversity in roles. Lights are used for quick rushes only. Do you have light without jump jets? Sorry for you, you choose wrong chassis. Scouting is limited to checking which gate enemy use for attack. The only other means of recon are UAVs. NARC has no use in the heavy ECM environment. TAGing is even more useless since TAG laser has short range and it's visible. Why there is a medium class of mechs I have absolutely no idea. Why there are any other weapons except ER PPC I have no idea. According to last few days, why there are any other weapons except the LRMs on the clan side I have no idea (with a huge bonus of making the game so laggy that laser/ballistics are next to useless).

On the other hand, how to get off this situation that's the million dollars question.

WHAT? LRMS are the only clan weapons? No one uses LRMS in concert....Its direct Fire of GTFO.

And what SITUATION would you like to get off?

Edited by DarthRevis, 16 February 2015 - 01:50 PM.

[Daruwind]

A long time ago i had an idea. Let´s limit drop deck to one mech per chassis (each player)

[Yokaiko]

Daruwind, on 16 February 2015 - 01:52 PM, said:

A long time ago i had an idea. Let´s limit drop deck to one mech per chassis (each player)

Not taking clan lights, and off prefer to avoid the as assaults.

[Caustic Canid]

Yokaiko, on 16 February 2015 - 01:13 PM, said:

They would gain 8 heat per cycle (more if running and jumping)

Looking at the top meta tbr (2lpl +4erml + 14dbl heatsinks) it would be 12 heat per cycle, standing still.

[Yokaiko]

Caustic Canid, on 16 February 2015 - 04:49 PM, said:

Looking at the top meta tbr (2lpl +4erml + 14dbl heatsinks) it would be 12 heat per cycle, standing still.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...974f040cd7794b1

Oh yeah, maths is hard.

That is what I get for speed posting waiting for drops.

[Caustic Canid]

Yokaiko, on 16 February 2015 - 07:40 PM, said:

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...974f040cd7794b1

Oh yeah, maths is hard.

That is what I get for speed posting waiting for drops.

My point is that after one alpha they would be suffering consequences, two alphas they would be in bad shape, and they would probably not survive the third.

Instead the current system allows mechs to stack tons of heat, after putting out tremendous damage (usually to just one or two areas) and then just trot away with zero heat penalties

[Yokaiko]

Caustic Canid, on 16 February 2015 - 08:51 PM, said:

Instead the current system allows mechs to stack tons of heat, after putting out tremendous damage (usually to just one or two areas) and then just trot away with zero heat penalties

Yeah and tripple or better firing rates for the SAME ten second heat cycle means that if they go more toward TT everyone would just explode.

Edited by Yokaiko, 16 February 2015 - 08:53 PM.

[Caustic Canid]

Yokaiko, on 16 February 2015 - 08:52 PM, said:

Yeah and tripple or better firing rates for the SAME ten second heat cycle means that if they go more toward TT everyone would just explode.

I think what a lot of people have suggested is that pgi should lower the heat cap, but raise dissipation. Allow faster chain firing of more weapons, but less overall huge alphas.