199 replies to this topic

[Sandersson Jankins]

Thorn Hallis, on 27 February 2015 - 05:12 AM, said:

First and foremost it's the lack of documentation that gives people a bad start in CW, with imbalance right after.

Completely agreed on the lack of documentation. I have brought roughly 10 new players into the game recently, only 1-2 of which have any previous BT experience. Luckily, I was on hand to explain EVERYTHING. Without me, they'd have little idea. Most people aren't gonna have a BT turbonerd comrade to start out with.

[DaFrog]

Lord Scarlett Johan, on 26 February 2015 - 10:11 PM, said:

That is absolutely irrelevant to the balance of this game. You shot for the stars and landed 15 feet away in the pond. Just stahp.

Protip: this isn't TT. It's not ever going to be TT. The sooner you understand that the sooner you'll be in a place to understand why this game is not balanced.

So your idea of mwo is point and shoot, irrelevant to the real world. Funny enough, in the real world, video games try to be as close to the real world as possible. If you refuse to see that, it means that you want MWO to be like DOOM and Duke Nukem.

It's not about table top rules, it's about emulating real world physics.

[DaFrog]

Look at Battle Field 4...

[Gyrok]

Lord Scarlett Johan, on 26 February 2015 - 04:58 PM, said:

Then why is it that the best players almost exclusively use clan tech when it counts? Even they don't like that 95% of their robots are invalidated by basically what amounts to 4 mechs. I'm guessing you've never played with heim, proton, hairpiece, celyth, jager, mag, etc. As they all say the same thing: firestarter best light, crow best medium, timberwolf best heavy, whale best assault. All of the EmP, Lords, and SJR guys say the same thing. Heim and Proton rant about clan superiority and what it's doing to the game.

The IS and Clans aren't balanced. The clans own 3 of the 4 weight classes. You don't balance off the general stuff. You balance based on the best stuff by either nerfing the best stuff (whale, timber, crow, firestarter) or buffing the not best stuff until it competes.

If you are convinced it is better because 1 or 2 people you trust told you it is superior, then others drink the kool-aid, you will fall into line.

I promise you right now, if EmP wanted to run quirked IS mechs, and adapt their playstyle to use those, instead of guys who are traditionally *gasp* clans players (look at their predominant loyalties for the longest time...). If they were diehard IS purists, they would be running IS mechs, and winning, and IS would be OP right now because PP FLD and the host of other issues with IS mechs.

Think I am full of it? You watch, the second someone starts kicking the crap out of teams running clan mechs in a league with IS mechs only...IS will suddenly be OP. You can do it with IS mechs now...just no one wants to look at things objectively, and/or they show bias toward the IS because <insert BS reason here>.

[Vassago Rain]

Gyrok, on 27 February 2015 - 07:20 AM, said:

If you are convinced it is better because 1 or 2 people you trust told you it is superior, then others drink the kool-aid, you will fall into line.

I promise you right now, if EmP wanted to run quirked IS mechs, and adapt their playstyle to use those, instead of guys who are traditionally *gasp* clans players (look at their predominant loyalties for the longest time...). If they were diehard IS purists, they would be running IS mechs, and winning, and IS would be OP right now because PP FLD and the host of other issues with IS mechs.

Think I am full of it? You watch, the second someone starts kicking the crap out of teams running clan mechs in a league with IS mechs only...IS will suddenly be OP. You can do it with IS mechs now...just no one wants to look at things objectively, and/or they show bias toward the IS because <insert BS reason here>.

Bro, even Russ has said that clans are too strong.

Please stop. I know you blew hundreds of dollars on fantasy gundams, but that doesn't excuse how awful the game's balance is right now. You're not gonna get any new players into CW like this.

[Lily from animove]

Vassago Rain, on 27 February 2015 - 07:24 AM, said:

Bro, even Russ has said that clans are too strong.

Please stop. I know you blew hundreds of dollars on fantasy gundams, but that doesn't excuse how awful the game's balance is right now. You're not gonna get any new players into CW like this.

The problem is the clans arent too strong.
Its some of the clans
And its some of the IS pilots (mostly newbs) causing this issue too.

I guess we are not balancing stuff right when we go clan vs IS.
I still think it was never a good idea trying to bring IS mechs up to TBR and SCR level. Instead the level of balance should have been the MDD. And mechs above this should have been balanced (or as many prefer to say "nerfed").

buffing a bad mech slightly to reach a normal level is doable, but tring to buff a bad mech to toplevel is like genetic monster experimental stuff of a cheap made horrormovie.

[Basilisk222]

I'm still not certain that it's anything more than pilot skill, the detriments on clan weaponry are pretty heavy. A laser vomit Stormcrow mught be able to boat a huge ton of lasers, but that does them no good at all if they miss. with a few. They run so hot that in longer firefights, clanners are firing no weapons, while most of the time, the IS can just keep slugging. Clanners punch hard, IS typically punches longer. Honestly if you're good at mitigating damage, and keeping pressure, Clanners have a lot of trouble dealing with that. That is partially why the 9S was so effective, aside from the range, it could fire volley after volley and not need a break. Firing off a few salvos or alphaing in some clan mechs straight up shut them down, heck the nova blows up literally, boom. from an alpha.

I guess my main point is that while the big three clanners are extremely strong mechs in thier own right, they aren't invincible. It's not auto win mode to run one. Heck, I've trolled a Timber Wolf to death in a Locust, He wasn't running streaks, but in Pirate's bane, it wouldn't have mattered anyway. I picked apart his mech carefully and used my speed to dodge that laser vomit, soon he was shutting down from trying so hard. Then I cored him. It's important to consider builds and playstyles in this.

IS mechs can become very very good, but they often start really really bad. A locust doesn't become USABLE until you've put close to 4 million into it. for a 190 XL and DHS. Even then its hard to get much out of it. Still, this is the case for a lot of IS mechs. When your cost to get into IS is thereabouts 1/2 for a equivalent tonnage mech, sticker shock hits new players over to IS.

The Cadet bonus does little to help CW, as it covers one mech and one only usually. It'd be better to get to choose a non hero or champion as a reward (1 of each weight class) after your 25 matches. (1 per weight class to avoid mastery, i'm on your side here pgi. dey still gotta grind or pay to get the mastery stuff) and make those mechs sell for 0 c-bills as well. You get them for free after all.

We need to somehow let new players know clan benefits and pitfalls when getting mechs and especially the same for IS mechs. The hidden cost of IS is sometimes huge, and players just don't know that.

I agree documentation and a player's guide in game would be helpful, it needs to touch on game conceps and concequences of types of mechs, and also what's expected of players in weight classes. In game Scripted training missions or walkthroughs would be an excellent place to start.

[krash27]

So the guy that is privy to all the numbers, Russ himself, is wrong about whether or not something is over powered in game?
People with no access to these numbers think they have it right and the guy responsible for the game knows nothing?

Bottom line is PGI has said there is an imbalance, they can see the numbers and stats that we can only guess at.

[sdsnowbum]

Lily from animove, on 27 February 2015 - 07:35 AM, said:

And its some of the IS pilots (mostly newbs) causing this issue too.

Depends on how you define newb.

All I know is, if I could go back and do it over again I would have mastered Stormcrows and bought and mastered Hellbringers instead of Centurions and a few IS hero mechs.

I am never going to put in the time and money to master every chassis and buy every weapon system and module for both sides. Or if I do it will be a year or more down the line.

Also I would not have mastered Adders or Kit Foxes .

[Basilisk222]

krash27, on 27 February 2015 - 08:09 AM, said:

So the guy that is privy to all the numbers, Russ himself, is wrong about whether or not something is over powered in game?
People with no access to these numbers think they have it right and the guy responsible for the game knows nothing?

Bottom line is PGI has said there is an imbalance, they can see the numbers and stats that we can only guess at.

Fair question, if all of the numbers indicate that something occurs, is it not possible that there can be many reasons for that outcome?

if 500 people buy a car in a year and 1/2 of them crash that car, can we say that on average all drivers are about 50% likely to get into an accident? Seems legit right?

What if I told you that 400 out of 500 sampled were 17 and 18 year olds? and 150 of the accidents that occured were in that demographic?

Obviously we see a huge discrepancy here in my example. The data is hugely skewed in one demographic.


We can't assume that just because clanners win X number of battles over IS, that the mech design principles are the issue. it's a much more faceted issue. Since we don't have those metrics, its also really hard for us to analyse them to come to a conclusion. This is a game played by many people, numbers never tell you everything you need to know. Nature sides with the hidden flaw. Many stats are needed to make a conclusion.

Clans wins are imbalanced, but I know in my own experience, that many clans and groups are older factions, and there seems to be a large number of organized groups in clan, and a lesser amount in IS. This may attribute to the stats. It's hard to find order in chaos.

I'm simply stating that end results do not convey the why, we know there is imbalance, and i'm unsure if that imbalance comes from clan mechs being "better" than IS mechs due to hitboxes or damage out put. There are many angles to consider.

Edited by Kilgorin Strom, 27 February 2015 - 08:27 AM.

[Lily from animove]

sdsnowbum, on 27 February 2015 - 08:18 AM, said:

Depends on how you define newb.

All I know is, if I could go back and do it over again I would have mastered Stormcrows and bought and mastered Hellbringers instead of Centurions and a few IS hero mechs.

I am never going to put in the time and money to master every chassis and buy every weapon system and module for both sides. Or if I do it will be a year or more down the line.

Also I would not have mastered Adders or Kit Foxes .

would you? if you are TOTALLY new to the game you would not know this at all, and after the cadet bonus you would very likely buy somethign else. Mostly a catapult because you may have figured out lrms are ratehr easy and efficient to use withitn the elo you started.

Sure I you go back now, with all the MWO knowledge yes you would do this, but a newb, so someone that is a new player and a noob because he has not much idea about the game will not make this proper decision at all.

if I would have started now, I would very like have saved up the money for a Nova, then an Adder. and past this more Novas to master it. Because I played MW before and I just liked these mechs by design (and the supernova). Espeically the Nova in MWO which is very much like a crossbreed between nova and supernova die to having Torso twist now.

past this I would probably try to aquire a TBR and a MDD. but a SCR I would never have bought simly because its one of the most fugly mechs ever.

[RubyFire]

The imbalance is all in your head. The statistics you're reading are derived from a really simple fact: Clan Mechs are not available, off the bat, to new to midlevel players, at the CW level. And, short of them splorging a ton of money out, they only will be after they play what basically amounts to several dozen matches in CW, or near one hundred on regular drops, just to get a complete line of a set of clan mechs. So, -statistically-, the players that have clan mechs have (generally) played significantly more than your regular IS player. They have what most IS players do not have: dedication to the game, the drive to improve, and the required skill to outplay other players.

As I said before: The apparent imbalance is purely based upon the apparent skill of the pilots attributed to the design of the mech conducting the mission it was built for.

[krash27]

We can assume that Russ is being honest with us when he says that clans are more powerful than IS and need an adjustment.

Or are you saying that without access to the numbers and stats that PGI has, some of you somehow (through voodoo black magic is my only guess) know more about the game and its mechanics and can see stats that even PGI can not?

Z3R0 0N3, on 27 February 2015 - 08:29 AM, said:

The imbalance is all in your head. The statistics you're reading are derived from a really simple fact: Clan Mechs are not available, off the bat, to new to midlevel players, at the CW level. And, short of them splorging a ton of money out, they only will be after they play what basically amounts to several dozen matches in CW, or near one hundred on regular drops, just to get a complete line of a set of clan mechs. So, -statistically-, the players that have clan mechs have (generally) played significantly more than your regular IS player. They have what most IS players do not have: dedication to the game, the drive to improve, and the required skill to outplay other players.

As I said before: The apparent imbalance is purely based upon the apparent skill of the pilots attributed to the design of the mech conducting the mission it was built for.

Its not all in our head according to Russ lol.

[RubyFire]

krash27, on 27 February 2015 - 08:40 AM, said:

We can assume that Russ is being honest with us when he says that clans are more powerful than IS and need an adjustment.

Or are you saying that without access to the numbers and stats that PGI has, some of you somehow (through voodoo black magic is my only guess) know more about the game and its mechanics and can see stats that even PGI can not?


Its not all in our head according to Russ lol.

Because no Dev has ever been wrong about the direction of the game they're developing. -EVER-.

Dev's rely on community feedback to fix corrections in their game, especially this one. And since the very vocal majority of the community are Inner Sphere who are upset that the infinitely superior clan technology is trumping the good guys, you believe they should be nerfed until Clans are required to drop with 3 mechs, without weapons or armor, and completely immobilized to make it fair.

You want to win against the clans? Here's how: Get into a unit. Develop tactics, strategies, and builds designed to counter the current clan meta (particularly laser vomit), and then actually fight them instead of being forum warriors.

Edited by Z3R0 0N3, 27 February 2015 - 08:48 AM.

[krash27]

Z3R0 0N3, on 27 February 2015 - 08:44 AM, said:

Because no Dev has ever been wrong about the direction of the game they're developing. -EVER-.

Dev's rely on community feedback to fix corrections in their game, especially this one. And since the very vocal majority of the community are Inner Sphere who are upset that the infinitely superior clan technology is trumping the good guys, you believe they should be nerfed until Clans are required to drop with 3 mechs, without weapons or weapons, and completely immobilized to make it fair.

ok ok you know more about the game than the designers lol.

One side or the other being OP isn't a design direction, its an accident of game mechanics lol.
FYI They have stated that they rely on the community to point out issues but they also said they look into the stats and numbers to see if the issues being brought forward are baseless or have a foundation.
They did their investigation and found that clan needs to be toned back, they looked at the stats and the numbers when the community brought it forward.
GGclose you win MWO lulz.

Edited by krash27, 27 February 2015 - 08:52 AM.

[sdsnowbum]

Lily from animove, on 27 February 2015 - 08:27 AM, said:

would you? if you are TOTALLY new to the game you would not know this at all, and after the cadet bonus you would very likely buy somethign else. Mostly a catapult because you may have figured out lrms are ratehr easy and efficient to use withitn the elo you started.

Sure I you go back now, with all the MWO knowledge yes you would do this, but a newb, so someone that is a new player and a noob because he has not much idea about the game will not make this proper decision at all.

if I would have started now, I would very like have saved up the money for a Nova, then an Adder. and past this more Novas to master it. Because I played MW before and I just liked these mechs by design (and the supernova). Espeically the Nova in MWO which is very much like a crossbreed between nova and supernova die to having Torso twist now.

past this I would probably try to aquire a TBR and a MDD. but a SCR I would never have bought simly because its one of the most fugly mechs ever.

That's all true and that's what I mean by how you define a newb.

It just sucks that you can easily waste your time on something that is never going to match up to the other options you had.

Then CW takes it to another level, when you can be on the side that has all the best most flexible options out of the gate, or you can be on the side where you have to really work and grind and hope everyone else on your side has done the same.

[RubyFire]

krash27, on 27 February 2015 - 08:49 AM, said:

ok ok you know more about the game than the designers lol.
FYI They have stated that they rely on the community to point out issues but they also said they look into the stats and numbers to see if the issues being brought forward are baseless or have a foundation.
They did their investigation and found that clan needs to be toned back, they looked at the stats and the numbers when the community brought it forward.
GGclose you win MWO lulz.

No need to be snide. 42 year old male being a forum warrior has little room to be such.

And these stats are skewed by the Clans who, by majority, have superior pilots.

[krash27]

Z3R0 0N3, on 27 February 2015 - 08:52 AM, said:

No need to be snide. 42 year old male being a forum warrior has little room to be such.

And these stats are skewed by the Clans who, by majority, have superior pilots.

Sorry if you think I am snide, I think you are arrogant.
I personally believe what PGI has to say about the game they develop.
If you do not then that's your prerogative.
I understand they have plans to bring the clans in line so there must be an issue somewhere.

No more forum warrior here than you are, and I couldn't be bothered to look at your profile because I don't feel the need to conduct personal attacks on you.

Edited by krash27, 27 February 2015 - 08:58 AM.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Gyrok, on 27 February 2015 - 07:20 AM, said:

If you are convinced it is better because 1 or 2 people you trust told you it is superior, then others drink the kool-aid, you will fall into line.

I promise you right now, if EmP wanted to run quirked IS mechs, and adapt their playstyle to use those, instead of guys who are traditionally *gasp* clans players (look at their predominant loyalties for the longest time...). If they were diehard IS purists, they would be running IS mechs, and winning, and IS would be OP right now because PP FLD and the host of other issues with IS mechs.

Think I am full of it? You watch, the second someone starts kicking the crap out of teams running clan mechs in a league with IS mechs only...IS will suddenly be OP. You can do it with IS mechs now...just no one wants to look at things objectively, and/or they show bias toward the IS because &lt;insert BS reason here&gt;.

Definition of Kool-aid drinker right there.

I'm not basing my opinion on just what they're saying. I'm basing it off the observations I've made from the various leagues I'm playing in and by looking at my stats.

My best light? Firestarter, by a LONG shot.
My best medium? Stormcrow, by a LONG shot
My best heavy? Timberwolf, by not just a long shot but a hyperjump's distance.
My best assault? Dire wolf, yet again by a huge difference.

If you take my top 4 performers, the Summoner edges out the Firestarter. But even the Summoner doesn't come close to the Timbergod. So my top 4 performing mechs are all Clam mechs by a SIGNIFICANT margin. And you think that's balanced? Ask any other quality pilot what their top performers are and you'll probably get the same if not a very similar list.

DaFrog, on 27 February 2015 - 07:12 AM, said:

So your idea of mwo is point and shoot, irrelevant to the real world. Funny enough, in the real world, video games try to be as close to the real world as possible. If you refuse to see that, it means that you want MWO to be like DOOM and Duke Nukem.

It's not about table top rules, it's about emulating real world physics.

I'd love real world physics. But this games balance is so ****** right now that's the last thing this game needs while the devs are floundering the weapon/mech balance.

[Lily from animove]

krash27, on 27 February 2015 - 08:56 AM, said:

Sorry if you think I am snide, I think you are arrogant.
I personally believe what PGI has to say about the game they develop.
If you do not then that's your prerogative.
I understand they have plans to bring the clans in line so there must be an issue somewhere.

No more forum warrior here than you are, and I couldn't be bothered to look at your profile because I don't feel the need to conduct personal attacks on you.

It's not about believing what they say, I am sure they try their best but somethign like 2 hours of a sample from the game are not adequate statistics. I sometimes believe that they just read the reasons for the statistical results wrong. because after a statsistic is someoen analysing it, and this may go wrong. I stills ee so many IS pilots in facepalming headshaking loadouts. Would they finally sue proper mechs statistics would look different. And this may be an issue when you balance the mid elo game because mid elo IS players such then the high elo game flips becaue high elo IS pilots know what they do and then they suddenly have stronger tools .

Such topics are extremely difficult because very small things can have big impact.