191 replies to this topic

[Mcgral18]

Here's a tidbit for you, OP.

If half the Clam's weren't garbage, there would be fewer God Tier robots. Right now you're pigeon holed into a handful of chassis because they are just that bad. Hitboxes and terribad construction rules(which IS mechs conveniently completely ignore) hold back far too many.

[Widowmaker1981]

Mirumoto Izanami, on 10 March 2015 - 03:52 AM, said:

If clan tech was the way it is supposed to be...I think you are ignoring that part of the flight of fancy suggestion...then yeah, I can see the clan proceeding even in such an imbalance of numbers, because that would mean UACs are single shot, CERPPCS are true 15/15, SRMS and SSRM don't have their heat and cooldown inflated, and lasers do not have their burn time and heat inflated.

and in that world, everyone and their mum would play clan, even if overall it was balanced on numbers - because people like playing the more powerful hero, and not the weak zergling. Also it would utterly, utterly screw the normal pub queue over.

Also, clans are not at all OP in the post quirk world (JJ animation on the TBR needs fixing though). build sensibly and choose the good mechs people.

[A Large Infant]

Yes, a ballistic IS mech can as least hope to beat a Clan laser-vomit mech ton-for-ton. As long as that ballistic mech still has ammo. In this game of magical always fully-armed fully-repaired drops it is a non issue, but in an extended campaign you better pray you keep salvaging the right ammunition.

[EvilCow]

Saxie, on 10 March 2015 - 03:29 AM, said:

rofl I would sure hope you would remove the quirks.

Good point, that would remove the need for quirks, those should only be used to balance IS mechs vs IS mechs and not to try to achieve Clan/IS parity.

[Raggedyman]

Jonny Slam, on 09 March 2015 - 05:03 PM, said:

I had almost a months break and have been back shooting for a few days, and it's abundantly clear that the game has slanted towards the clans too much. The clan mechs are more powerful, especially the mids and heavies, so naturally more pilots are now going clan. Which makes the pilot base population of the clans more powerful as well. Which unbalances CW with waves and waves of clanners.

There is a solution - balance by CBills or BV, as those take into account what you are actually piloting rather than what it's weight class is. However that's going to increase the wait time for the queue, so carries it;s own problems.

[Mirumoto Izanami]

Yokaiko, on 10 March 2015 - 04:12 AM, said:

Enough to make up for a 200 ton deficit?

Oh gawds, heavens to betsy yes. Probably more than that. When introduced in TT, the CERML was the most broken weapon in the game. Translating that to MWO would mean giving it the same cooldown, heat, and burn time as IS MLs, but the 7 damage and the range of an IS LL.

That's not getting into how much better Clan Heavies and Assaults would be with snap fire UACs and 15/15 CERPPCs, or near snap fire CLPLs with ranges of LLs. It would be devastating. (I shudder to thing of Dires with Dual single shot UAC20s).

Widowmaker1981, on 10 March 2015 - 04:17 AM, said:

and in that world, everyone and their mum would play clan, even if overall it was balanced on numbers - because people like playing the more powerful hero, and not the weak zergling. Also it would utterly, utterly screw the normal pub queue over.

Oh, I know, but I'm just exploring the hypothetical matchup based on the proposed parameters.

[A Large Infant]

Raggedyman, on 10 March 2015 - 04:44 AM, said:

There is a solution - balance by CBills or BV, as those take into account what you are actually piloting rather than what it's weight class is. However that's going to increase the wait time for the queue, so carries it;s own problems.

What would be truly interesting as far as gameplay goes would be if teams got a set Battle Value and could field 8-12 combatants based on allocation. Think long and hard about bringing that Dire Wolf because you may have fewer and weaker teammates as a result

[charov]

I love when bad players cry against clans. I don't know you but I have approx the same results with both mechs. I love is ac and the shorter beam time, they give a real edge especially in cqb. Also, the tw is greatly overrated: we know it tanks damage exceptionally well so just fire at the right time to its ct and take advantage its longer beam time to tank the returning fire. It works very well, but I don't think that a bunch of whiners have thought about that. The only problem I see is the jj exploit but you have to be really lame to use it, isn't it?

[SirMad]

if clan and IS are balanced, how do you explain the constant winning of planets for the clans?



taken from:
http://www.reddit.co..._battle_report/

[Widowmaker1981]

SirMad, on 10 March 2015 - 07:35 AM, said:

if clan and IS are balanced, how do you explain the constant winning of planets for the clans?



taken from:
http://www.reddit.co..._battle_report/

Big, powerful comp units swap sides. Whichever side they are on wins planets like a boss. These teams will win regardless of clan/IS choice because they are far more co-ordinated... FRR was stomping hard for a while when a bunch of good merc units went there.

Its about the players and where the comp units are, nothing else.

Edited by Widowmaker1981, 10 March 2015 - 07:42 AM.

[SirMad]

so u say the comp unit change to the clan side... because of what?

[Fate 6]

luxebo, on 09 March 2015 - 05:51 PM, said:

The thing is with the Cauldron, Shadow Cat, and Arctic Cheetah this isn't even a concern. Bring a Stormcrow to Shadow Cat or bring a Cauldron instead of Timber or dire wolf with shadow cat with mad dog/stormcrow with arctic cheetah.

Oh I agree that will be an issue, but for what exists right now the problem is that Clans get too much tonnage efficiency. The Inner Sphere high end heavies and most of their assaults (Stalker, Crab and Banshee are fine) need significant help.

EDIT: Maybe the Inner Sphere just needs a decent 75 ton mech. The Orion is still the only choice after all this time and it is a very limited mech with the current quirks. On top of that, the 80 ton mech choices are garbage.

Edited by Fate 6, 10 March 2015 - 08:08 AM.

[Amsro]

Widowmaker1981, on 10 March 2015 - 07:42 AM, said:

Big, powerful comp units swap sides. Whichever side they are on wins planets like a boss. These teams will win regardless of clan/IS choice because they are far more co-ordinated... FRR was stomping hard for a while when a bunch of good merc units went there.

Its about the players and where the comp units are, nothing else.

Heh FRR still stomps hard, we just don't have the numbers to stop ghost drops.

I don't feel like the clan mechs are insanely overpowered vs IS, but I can do better in the trial clan mechs (supposed "OP" clan mechs and do better then in my IS mechs (which I already do well in).

I think the main place that IS is better then Clan is in drawn out close range battles, the clan mechs run out of heat capacity before IS mechs.

But in the long range game it is hands down clan mechs. Only the Gauss Rifle and quirked ER Large can come close.

In the end I can't say which one is definitively better, but planet data is pretty telling and your idea that "Its about the players and where the comp units are, nothing else." is a biased observation.

Edited by Amsro, 10 March 2015 - 08:16 AM.

[Red1769]

SirMad, on 10 March 2015 - 07:57 AM, said:

so u say the comp unit change to the clan side... because of what?

Because they can? A change of pace? Only they can actually answer that, PGI has stated there is a bit too much faction swapping going on. The balance is not as large as what everyone seems to think it is, though. Another reason could be because the IS is too busy fighting each other, or at least from what I gathered from the CW sections. Thus they don't have the manpower to lash out and bite back at the clans.

Edited by Red1769, 10 March 2015 - 08:17 AM.

[ThirtyOughtSix]

Jonny Slam, on 09 March 2015 - 05:33 PM, said:

Yet there is the problem with that: There is no IS numerical superiority, in matches or in pilot numbers. Players can choose which side to join (good thing), but in the face of the equal numbers (in matches) combined with the superior mech of the clan tech they will more often go clan. Without some balance this shift will just accelerate.

Exactly. This is why CW will fail. X (IS players that play CW regularly) / 6 houses must = X (Clan players that play CW regularly) / 4 clans. This will never ever work. They need to find a balance in numbers alone, then the mechs. Unfortunately, that means at the minimum cutting two houses. TBH, they should scrap CW altogether. It will always be lopsided, or at least make it a moot point in the interests of the game.

Unless, PGI plans to play com star in the next couple months and push the clans back into the periphery by GM powers. Then restart the process all over again.

Edited by Hyper99, 10 March 2015 - 08:20 AM.

[charov]

Is has also other problems such as that most of the newbies play is and drop with terrible builds because they lack of experience and is mechs are cheaper. Clans require more experience in order to properly manage heat and longer beam time but, in the hand of an experienced player, they run even better than is mechs.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Mirumoto Izanami, on 10 March 2015 - 04:51 AM, said:

Oh gawds, heavens to betsy yes. Probably more than that. When introduced in TT, the CERML was the most broken weapon in the game. Translating that to MWO would mean giving it the same cooldown, heat, and burn time as IS MLs, but the 7 damage and the range of an IS LL.

That's not getting into how much better Clan Heavies and Assaults would be with snap fire UACs and 15/15 CERPPCs, or near snap fire CLPLs with ranges of LLs. It would be devastating. (I shudder to thing of Dires with Dual single shot UAC20s).

The thing is the translation should have been one turn equals 10 seconds, so that would have been 5 damage over 10 seconds or 7 damage over 10 seconds. So if you would give, for example, the IS-ML and C-ER ML the same burn time and cooldown, then what we'd see is:

IS ML
2.00 Damage
1.20 Heat
1.00 Beam
3.00 Cooldown

C ER ML
2.80 Damage
2.00 Heat
1.00 Beam
3.00 Cooldown

Against original Armor Values these values should have them still be rather viable weapons.

The problem was weapons were mistranslated with big increases to rate of fire along with increased damage and heat output; and then we got doubled armor instead of revisiting weapon stats, but it really wouldn't take that much to tweak current values when we have various systems doubled up from the P&P values.

A few more examples:

Spoiler

The Smaller Ballistics would need increased values from the original, here's what I'd consider for UAC/5s

2.00 Damage
0.40 Heat
2.00 Cooldown

So Compared to ERPPCs

6.00 Damage
6.00 Heat
4.00 Cooldown

And UAC/20

8.00 Damage
2.80 Heat
4.00 Cooldown

[Metus regem]

red devil2, on 10 March 2015 - 08:22 AM, said:

Is has also other problems such as that most of the newbies play is and drop with terrible builds because they lack of experience and is mechs are cheaper. Clans require more experience in order to properly manage heat and longer beam time but, in the hand of an experienced player, they run even better than is mechs.

Well having swapped to IS, I have seen my game play be better vs. clans in CW... then again I know the weakness of the clan mechs, and use the IS advanatages against the clan weaknesses... but if I were to be dumb and try to trade face time with a Clan Mechs, I would get shot apart... so force them to brawl, the clan mechs do not like to fight in close, too hot...

[ROSS-128]

I don't see 10v12 ever being a viable solution, because even if you can give the Inner Sphere larger numbers inside an individual CW match (ie letting them drop 12 mans vs 10), you cannot give the IS factions more players overall.

This means even if dropping 12v10 lets IS win 50% of their matches on average (ie balanced on a per-match basis), they will still get rolled on the overall map because for every five IS teams that drop, the Clans can drop six. This means for every five Clan teams that the IS engages, the Clans get one Ghost Drop (ie a free win).

And that's assuming even populations (ie people decide whether to go IS or Clan more or less at random).

What's more likely to happen is that players will stack clans, because being in a stronger mech on a smaller team will inflate their "performance metrics".

They'll get higher KDR, because they get more oppotunities to kill in each match and their mechs have more killing potiential in the first place. They'll have higher ratios of damage dealt to damage recieved. They'll still have an inflated W/L, due to ghost drops. They will make more CBills and EXP per drop, because those rewards are based on damage, kills, assists, destroyed components... all of which Clans will be able to get more of because their enemy has more mechs to kill, more components to destroy, more (total) armor to damage.

Which will incintivize players to stack Clans. Which means more ghost drops, which means IS gets rolled even harder, because Clans will have both quality AND quantity. That's one of the biggest problems with having a "quality over quantity" faction in a game like this. A faction that is stronger player-for-player incentivizes team stacking. Players migrate towards the best gear, and competitive players follow the gear more than others.

This means when a faction is OP, the large population and organized competitive groups automatically follow. It's a "if you build it they will come" situation.

Essentially, it cannot work unless you have a way to artificially inflate the IS playerbase or restrict the Clan playerbase, both of which would be hugely messy issues to tackle.

And that's not even considering what it would do to solo queue. Would we segregate it into Clans vs IS? Would we nerf "solo Clans" so that they play completely differently from "CW Clans"? Would we just throw our hands up and give up, as solo queue devolves completely into Clan vs Clan because the team with more Clan mechs wins?

The solo queue problem definitely complicates things, because it remains an issue even if you do take a "pounds per player" approach such as giving IS heavier drop decks or a fifth deck slot. Because in solo queue you don't have drop decks, unless you plan to introduce drop decks to solo queue and tweak the MM so that it treats "clan tonnage" as being worth more than "IS tonnage".

[Johnny Z]

This isnt my idea but when I seen it, I was convinced this is how they will balance the Storm Crow for instance. Severaly limit torso twist.

This is an example of how they will balanced the top 4 Omni mech most likely. This along with some kind of Inner Sphere engine improvements and some kind of nerf to clan streaks and players got a fairly well balanced game.

Looking forward to it myself.

Those wanting an unbalanced game, I refer you to my excellent reply on the previous page.

Edited by Johnny Z, 10 March 2015 - 08:37 AM.