139 replies to this topic

[Augustus Martelus II]

[KraftySOT]

No going by total available, the IS has a smaller ratio of good to bad, than the clans, simply because they have vastly more options. About 6% of IS mechs are good. A larger percentage of the clam mechs are good. Though less total mechs.

Then you have the omni pod system where the mech is pretty good regardless, and we have failtastic variants of some great mechs.

Ultimately, both of these sets of good, fit pretty nicely into a Drop Deck, so you end up with a pretty balanced game in CW. In Pugs...solo dropping...that sir is just up to the gods.

If you let people bring everything from He-112s and Fairey Battles into a match against Ta-152s and P47s...

Welp.

What do you think is going to happen.

That doesnt change the fact however that theres still balance, since any kite (gundam) can be killed by any other kite (gundamn) and in certain situations that is up to the pilot, even the best kites (gundams) have their counter where they arent the best anymore.

Its the man, not the machine.

Id still give the edge to the clans, and the holy trinity should probably be dealt with. What id like to see, is the ST nerf come in, then the bad clam mechs get some much better quirks. Leveling out the holy trinity and dropping those down to the power level of the 4N or 1N or King Crab. Theyre still "better" on paper, but have drawbacks that the opposing player needs to maximize.

Much like stretching out the Germans as the soviets even though all their troops are better. If you thin them out, you can punch holes with massive numbers and push back their entire line when it compensates for the schwerpunkt breakthrough. Or that your FW190s roll rate can get you out of any nasty P47 on your tail nonsense even though the **** is better than the Dora.

Is balance perfect? Nope. Will it ever be? Nope. And its going to constantly get messed with as new mechs come in and quirks change because Paul forgot to sacrifice a chicken to the hamsterwheel again and now Cicadas have Gauss quirks...

But its not bad. Especially compared to pay2play clams. That was OP. This is childs play. Sure they have an edge. But its an edge, much like the spitfires. Clams are attractive, clams attract paying customers, paying customers are space rich, space rich generally always beats space poor, even if the space poor has a superior mech. His probably isnt derped and mastered. So you have all this anecdotal evidence based on a pile of **** witness statements.

Then you have pretty much all the comp players who agree, balance is better, by a mile, but yeah theres probably an edge to the clans because of the holy trinity. If you level that out, bump up the bad clans, slightly nerf the holy trinity, youre looking at as good balance as we'll get, until Paul decides as I mentioned, the gods decided balance needs to be thrown out of whack again.

If someone could just make LRMs not annoying when theyre useful, then make them useful, fix flamers and mgs, we might have a remotely acceptable f2p arena shooter to go to steam with.

Gyrok, on 23 March 2015 - 02:49 PM, said:

The 3LL WVR is just fine...so is the "pocket dragon" WVR too...the FS9-S is the medpulse monster...

I think you missed quite a few...

Yeah should have switched the A and S meh bad.

The Wvr is bad. 3 LL is pathetically bad, and the pocket dragon is bad. The dragon isnt even that great because of its enormous CT, its just it scares off newbs when theyre being rattled by its DPS cannons, because they dont realize that the crosshair never actually moves and it doesnt effect your aim, and its DPS is low enough that every GOOD mech, turns it into ashe in 6 or 7 seconds.

[KraftySOT]

I mean when youre basing a mech being good on a 10 damage weapon (the group of AC5s is basically a single weapon platform for its purposes)

When compared to the DoomCrow or Banshee that basically have a 60 damage weapon.

I just dont see where you can justify that. Unless youre basing it ENTIRELY on screenshake effect which only rattles the nerves of the uninformed and green behind the ears, and DPS thats comparable to, oh I dont know, all the other good mechs.

Sure its got DPS. But it has nothing else. No speed. No good hitboxes. No high mounts. Less than 100 total CT armor/internals. Bad alpha.

Its a one trick pony.

Edited by KraftySOT, 23 March 2015 - 03:08 PM.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Gyrok, on 23 March 2015 - 02:43 PM, said:

I am curious as to what data they are using...the only thing they have to gauge is CW, where pubs go to get stomped by organized 12 mans routinely...

They have CW data, which has IS vs IS, Clan vs Clan and Clan vs IS to get their data from. They can easily tell which is a pug and which isn't and sort the data accordingly. This leaves them with good data on how well factions deal with each other and against the other faction. Obviously, if Russ says they aren't where they want them yet, the Clans are winning against the IS more often than they should according to PGI's own metrics. It's also obviously not by an enormous amount or a 10-20% speed reduction added to the already existing 20% cooling dissipation loss is what's being considered to balance things out better wouldn't be the consideration on the table, it would be something actually hard hitting, like increasing heat on Clan tech or something similar, or even boosting IS equipment more(serious mistake IMO, they've done that too much already and need to lower the quirks for weapons, none should be over 15% total boost to any weapon type or individual weapon, boost the MECH, not the weapons!).

Trying to put the disparity on lack of skill is rather telling Gyrok, you need to stop doing that. That is a good part of what Krafty is talking about, personal perceptions are just that, personal. I do believe it was you that stated a no skilled team ONLY beat your team because of OP TBolts, despite that no skilled team being -MS-, such a no skilled team they are....

I actually WANT the Clans to be stronger than the IS, there's no challenge in beating a weaker foe, tasteless victory may be YOUR thing, but it's not mine, so I'll advocate to get things as close to parity as possible while still leaving the Clans slightly ahead on the curve than the IS, that way when I beat up Clans in CW, it's a very sweet taste.

[HARDKOR]

Ultimatum X, on 21 March 2015 - 02:28 PM, said:

Saying a Stalker-4N is as good as a Dire Wolf, tells me that you aren't quite seeing the whole picture. No offense.

I'd rather have the Stalker.

[Gas Guzzler]

KraftySOT, on 21 March 2015 - 02:31 PM, said:

Clam lasers are bad.

WTB facedesk meme now please.


Sorry, not to be rude, but that statement just lost you some credibility there.

[Gyrok]

Kristov Kerensky, on 23 March 2015 - 03:12 PM, said:

They have CW data, which has IS vs IS, Clan vs Clan and Clan vs IS to get their data from. They can easily tell which is a pug and which isn't and sort the data accordingly. This leaves them with good data on how well factions deal with each other and against the other faction. Obviously, if Russ says they aren't where they want them yet, the Clans are winning against the IS more often than they should according to PGI's own metrics. It's also obviously not by an enormous amount or a 10-20% speed reduction added to the already existing 20% cooling dissipation loss is what's being considered to balance things out better wouldn't be the consideration on the table, it would be something actually hard hitting, like increasing heat on Clan tech or something similar, or even boosting IS equipment more(serious mistake IMO, they've done that too much already and need to lower the quirks for weapons, none should be over 15% total boost to any weapon type or individual weapon, boost the MECH, not the weapons!).

Trying to put the disparity on lack of skill is rather telling Gyrok, you need to stop doing that. That is a good part of what Krafty is talking about, personal perceptions are just that, personal. I do believe it was you that stated a no skilled team ONLY beat your team because of OP TBolts, despite that no skilled team being -MS-, such a no skilled team they are....

I actually WANT the Clans to be stronger than the IS, there's no challenge in beating a weaker foe, tasteless victory may be YOUR thing, but it's not mine, so I'll advocate to get things as close to parity as possible while still leaving the Clans slightly ahead on the curve than the IS, that way when I beat up Clans in CW, it's a very sweet taste.

LOL...if you think clans are stronger than IS right now, you have not legitimately considered the quirked mechs being used in drop decks...

[Red1769]

Kristov Kerensky, on 23 March 2015 - 03:12 PM, said:

They have CW data, which has IS vs IS, Clan vs Clan and Clan vs IS to get their data from. They can easily tell which is a pug and which isn't and sort the data accordingly. This leaves them with good data on how well factions deal with each other and against the other faction. Obviously, if Russ says they aren't where they want them yet, the Clans are winning against the IS more often than they should according to PGI's own metrics. It's also obviously not by an enormous amount or a 10-20% speed reduction added to the already existing 20% cooling dissipation loss is what's being considered to balance things out better wouldn't be the consideration on the table, it would be something actually hard hitting, like increasing heat on Clan tech or something similar, or even boosting IS equipment more(serious mistake IMO, they've done that too much already and need to lower the quirks for weapons, none should be over 15% total boost to any weapon type or individual weapon, boost the MECH, not the weapons!).

While they could seperate and ignore the PUG vs Premade matches, I still wouldn't use CW as a metric. Between weight limitations for your drop deck and the disparity of mech variety (or from what I can tell from reading the CW forums) and Elo difference could be significantly higher than in the public queue...and those are just off the top of my head.

That said, I'm not against the upcoming Engine Nerf. But the underperforming/passable Clan Mechs would get hurt far more than the the good/solid ones would, thus need better/higher percentages of quirks for them to even be considered over the top few. I'm especially concerned over the Warhawk and Dire Whale (both being rather solid, but are already huge targets and tend to lose a side torso quickly...at least on the Warhawk).

HARDKOR, on 23 March 2015 - 03:23 PM, said:

I'd rather have the Stalker.

Stalkers are more tanky, faster, and slightly more agile...but the DWF carries more punch and doesn't run as hot. I like them both evenly.

Edited by Red1769, 23 March 2015 - 03:43 PM.

[Ace Selin]

Ignore everything KraftySOT says, he is clearly biased in favour of Clans.
The moment he says things like a Stalker beats a DireWolf (in general terms) & that Clan lasers are bad, you know he is talking pure garbage.

Edited by Ace Selin, 23 March 2015 - 03:48 PM.

[Deathlike]

I'm bailing on this thread, since I'm seeing extremes on both ends being a bit disingenuous on the arguments.

When I try to discuss balance, I try to factor in the base values... just for the sake of straight up balance. Once quirks are involved (on both ends), everything becomes complicated because you are then balancing to the quirks, and not overall global balance which everything is connected to.

For instance, most people do not run IS PPCs/ERPPCs w/o some form of quirk. While I do see people still running PPCs/ERPPC/CERPPCs, a fair majority that used to run them have replaced that weapon with LPL/CLPL, given the generally improved state of that weapon that happened months ago... this is before we even factor ANY sort of quirk.

The thing we honestly have to do is set a baseline (aka no quirks) and work our way towards understanding the nuances and differences between each and every mech, before we come to a conclusion of "X weapon is OP/UP" or "Clan XL Engines make Y mech great/useless" or even "Z IS mech is comparable to D Clan mech".

The reason why I even bother writing articles about said mechs, is to express (as best I can, with minimal bias if I can help it) what they can and cannot do, and what it takes to make it all possible and note all the downsides that come with it (it's not as simple as Mist Lynx sucks or Firestarter is OP).

So, I'll just leave this thread... and leave people to arguing their side of the story, and not just simplifying everything because it fits their argument.

I spent already enough time trying to dispel the King Crab vs Dire Wolf debate and I hear nothing from this particular person trying to counter my point (only to see that person relapse into the King Crab can compete with the Dire Wolf facade). People on both sides do this, and it doesn't help further the conversation.

Edited by Deathlike, 23 March 2015 - 05:54 PM.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Gyrok, on 23 March 2015 - 03:32 PM, said:

LOL...if you think clans are stronger than IS right now, you have not legitimately considered the quirked mechs being used in drop decks...

You don't actually read what's in the post huh?

What I think doesn't matter, nor does what you think matter. PGI says they are stronger, hence the changes being proposed by Russ. I said I WANT them to be stronger.

Red1769, PGI can see the data from CW which tells the whole story, not the incomplete whines on the forums, too many of those are pure bs and we all know it. I've seen Clan 12 mans drop with everything the Clans have in CW, not all of the big teams are pure meta players, so there is plenty of usage to look at, same for the IS. Even PUG vs PUG can tell them a lot about the balance issues. And Elo isn't used in CW, it's just faction and number of open slots that decides who faces who. So it's pure tech vs tech once they weed out the 12 man vs PUG factor, get nice views of how the large units are doing against each other, against PUGs, and how PUGs do against PUGs. It's actually a great data pool, hell of a lot better than non-CW drops, no mixed tech per side so you can clearly see how that influences things, and they can really see exactly how well the top tier Mechs are doing, since those are all that is used by some of the big teams. PGI knew about the Tbolt issue pretty quick, no idea why they took so long to act on it, it's PGI, who the hell knows why they do some of the stupid stuff they do.

[KraftySOT]

Ace Selin, on 23 March 2015 - 03:45 PM, said:

Ignore everything KraftySOT says, he is clearly biased in favour of Clans.
The moment he says things like a Stalker beats a DireWolf (in general terms) & that Clan lasers are bad, you know he is talking pure garbage.

Yet, I have no clam mechs in my hangar, am permanent to liao, and have zero intention of ever playing clams outside of random hilarity and event give aways.

I have played all the cbill clams, owned most of them, and did so back before, during, and after the quirkening.

There is absolutely no way on earth that a clam ERLL is as good as a reasonably quirked IS LL or ERLL. Id rather eat sand that put 2 ERLL on an Adder and take that into a game. Whereas ill do a happy dance if you give me a Raven 3L with 2ERLL.

Its hard points, location of those hardpoints, ecm, engine advantage, mobility, all act as force multipliers to those ERLL on the Raven, making THOSE ERLL (and why would you take ones that arent that good?) far better than contemporary mounted ERLL on clam mechs. The exception possibly being the Hellbringer, because mounts.

Even on the Doomcrow, if it wasnt backed up by the very good ERML clam laser, the ERLL would be less than stellar compared to the IS lasers that have half the duration or more.

Clam pulse lasers are bad. Smalls are bad. Larges are bad. Thats all of their lasers but one.

That means clam lasers as a whole, are bad.

Youre bad if you dont understand that. Without force multipliers like the mounts, ecm, and back up Mediums, a clam ERLL is a pile of junk.

And ill say it again. Most mechs are bad. Most weapons are bad. There are a handful of mechs on both sides that are good.

The holy trinity has an edge, over the best IS mechs. While I disagree a tad here and there with the Meta list, as a whole, its spot on. The clams are better. But such a small factor that its irrevelent.

What we need, is all the really, really bads, Kintaros, Vindicators, Myst Lynx, Nova, to come up in power, fix the MGs, Flamers, etc. Then see what can be done with the midrange bad mechs to maybe bring them up a tad so theres more variation.

Edited by KraftySOT, 23 March 2015 - 06:50 PM.

[Adamski]

I don't know why people compare the Quirked LLAS to the C-ERMLAS, when a group of 3 is much closer to a pair of C-LPLAS

25% range quirk & 10% range module brings LLAS to 600m, the same optimal as C-LPLAS
3x LLAS is 27 dmg for 21 heat, 2x C-LPLAS is 26 dmg for 20 heat
3x LLAS is 15 tons, 2x C-LPLAS is 12 tons

[Karl Streiger]

Deathlike, on 23 March 2015 - 05:52 PM, said:

The thing we honestly have to do is set a baseline (aka no quirks) and work our way towards understanding the nuances and differences between each and every mech, before we come to a conclusion of "X weapon is OP/UP" or "Clan XL Engines make Y mech great/useless" or even "Z IS mech is comparable to D Clan mech".

The reason why I even bother writing articles about said mechs, is to express (as best I can, with minimal bias if I can help it) what they can and cannot do, and what it takes to make it all possible and note all the downsides that come with it (it's not as simple as Mist Lynx sucks or Firestarter is OP).

Thanks very much thanks - its hard to compare figures when you say the IS LL is the worst energy weapon in game - and everybody is shouting but the Stalker4N, the Wolverine, the Zeus........ still bullshit.
Considering pinpoint damage (on Lasers) so the damage you dealt with a "burn" or Tic...the IS LPL has twice the firepower of the IS LL... its not as obvious when you look at the "pure" stats.
Well you can say the IS LL weights 2tons less and has more range - but when i consider range a problem - i use the ER LL

To balance stuff - without using generic BattleValues - you have to balance stuff on the base of X per ton and crit.
You need a multidimensional matrix - including Heat, RateOfFire, DoT, PP, Damage. Weight, Crits and in the end - the values of each weapon system have to be close. Said the values of a ISGaussRifle have to be the same as those of a ER-Small Laser

Adamski, on 23 March 2015 - 09:58 PM, said:

I don't know why people compare the Quirked LLAS to the C-ERMLAS, when a group of 3 is much closer to a pair of C-LPLAS

25% range quirk & 10% range module brings LLAS to 600m, the same optimal as C-LPLAS
3x LLAS is 27 dmg for 21 heat, 2x C-LPLAS is 26 dmg for 20 heat
3x LLAS is 15 tons, 2x C-LPLAS is 12 tons

just underline that IS LL is the worst choice you can do.

[Lily from animove]

KraftySOT, on 23 March 2015 - 02:57 PM, said:

The Wvr is bad. 3 LL is pathetically bad, and the pocket dragon is bad. The dragon isnt even that great because of its enormous CT, its just it scares off newbs when theyre being rattled by its DPS cannons, because they dont realize that the crosshair never actually moves and it doesnt effect your aim, and its DPS is low enough that every GOOD mech, turns it into ashe in 6 or 7 seconds.

LOL? you should play vs coburn and I want to see how you do this in said "GOOD" mech vs his dragon.

[Karl Streiger]

Lily from animove, on 24 March 2015 - 12:12 AM, said:

LOL? you should play vs coburn and I want to see how you do this in said "GOOD" mech vs his dragon.

But he is right - if there is one or a couple of persons that could deal pain with a flammer - that is not representative.
As said its still a dragon - with two AC 5s... of course they can deal pain - but they need time while they are exposed.

Trick is to get this buddy in your aim before he starts rattling...or something that works everytime - bring a wing men

[Lily from animove]

Karl Streiger, on 24 March 2015 - 12:20 AM, said:

But he is right - if there is one or a couple of persons that could deal pain with a flammer - that is not representative.
As said its still a dragon - with two AC 5s... of course they can deal pain - but they need time while they are exposed.

Trick is to get this buddy in your aim before he starts rattling...or something that works everytime - bring a wing men

yeha but if the dragon has wingman too? makign the situation a 2vs1 is of course workign vs every mech. and most other mechs, especially clans ALL need time exposed to be working, because hardly soem of them are not stream (gauss and PPC is the exception)

[Karl Streiger]

Lily from animove, on 24 March 2015 - 01:17 AM, said:

yeha but if the dragon has wingman too? makign the situation a 2vs1 is of course workign vs every mech. and most other mechs, especially clans ALL need time exposed to be working, because hardly soem of them are not stream (gauss and PPC is the exception)

of course but there are two different charts:
1 is 1 vs 1 performance - even before the quirks the Dragon had some good "duelist" options and was a good hit and run mech - but this time is almost gone
the other chart is how it fits into the team - the danger of the dragon is not to detect it or have a more serious thread in front of you - so the second line support is filled good by this Mech.

That on the other hand shows the "problem" with quirks - the Dragon was never supposed to be a Support Mech but a buriser - the JaegerMechs should bring the pain - not the Dragon
(well if they would add damage perks - for cool down flaws - a light weight MAC dealing 8dmg for 2.5 sec cool down would be a good weapon for the Dragon)

[Gyrok]

Kristov Kerensky, on 23 March 2015 - 06:10 PM, said:

You don't actually read what's in the post huh?

What I think doesn't matter, nor does what you think matter. PGI says they are stronger, hence the changes being proposed by Russ. I said I WANT them to be stronger.

Red1769, PGI can see the data from CW which tells the whole story, not the incomplete whines on the forums, too many of those are pure bs and we all know it. I've seen Clan 12 mans drop with everything the Clans have in CW, not all of the big teams are pure meta players, so there is plenty of usage to look at, same for the IS. Even PUG vs PUG can tell them a lot about the balance issues. And Elo isn't used in CW, it's just faction and number of open slots that decides who faces who. So it's pure tech vs tech once they weed out the 12 man vs PUG factor, get nice views of how the large units are doing against each other, against PUGs, and how PUGs do against PUGs. It's actually a great data pool, hell of a lot better than non-CW drops, no mixed tech per side so you can clearly see how that influences things, and they can really see exactly how well the top tier Mechs are doing, since those are all that is used by some of the big teams. PGI knew about the Tbolt issue pretty quick, no idea why they took so long to act on it, it's PGI, who the hell knows why they do some of the stupid stuff they do.

If PGI knows what to do, and knows how to read the data they have, why have they not fixed the genuine issue????

Think about that.

The solo queue is balanced, so mechs must be basically balanced.

The group queue still has one sided stomps on occasions, as does the CW mode.

Hmm...if the scenario where all things should be equal has mech equality for the most part...but the modes where people can group up from the same unit still have stomps...???

Gosh, I am not sure where to pin that...I know!!!! We should blanket nerf IS mechs because that will fix it and half the community thinks IS mechs are OP!!!!

The reality is, groups are still OP, skill is still OP, and teamwork on comms is still OP.

You cannot fix that. Sorry, it just will not happen. Frankly, in my mind, as a player who has spent about 30-40 hours a week playing this game for the last 2+ years, I do not think it should be reasonable for someone who has played this game for 3-6 hours per week for 2-3 months to come in and expect to beat me and the guys I play with in an organized drop.

Do you think that should be attainable? Someone who has not honed the skills required to play MWO at a high level should be able to come into "group focused hardmode" and beat you with 11 randoms? Does that sound at all like something that should be achievable with any regularity?

No...?

But...?

I thought you.....

So, then what you are actually looking for is already here, and in the game, and the discrepancy is solely in the form of bads playing goods who are in organized groups and losing consistently as they should...?

Good talk...

[Averen]

Yeah, it's too bad those statistics PGI uses have no data to determine the skill or playtime of any player, there surely is no way to make comparisions of one players performance in a clanner and an is-mech.

Oh wait, they do have all that. I guess the idea of the 3 strongest mechs in the game being op isn't too far-fetched.

Edited by Averen, 24 March 2015 - 06:45 AM.