23 replies to this topic

[Urfin]

First of all, big thanks to the IS side, especially Kurita and Steiner - I haven't had fights this tense and fun for a long time. Our last fight was against Kurita, and it was wonderful and worth remembering.

1. Mech balance is surprisingly ok, except for the little ********, of course. Really, I thought it would be much worse. [EDIT: Clan vs IS as a whole, I mean. Individually, they're WILDLY unqequal, obviously]

2. Maps SUCK. Of all the things horribly wrong with this game, the maps are by far #1. Stuffing cover in a space is not level design.

3. Rushing objectives is a problem, and it's a problem because the idea of shooting static objects to win a fight lacks any sort of verisimilitude or sense. This is a game about stompy robots shooting each other, and having such rushes as an option/necessity is NOT FUN. Although it's a step better than standing in a square to win a fight, I guess.

4. After so much CW, it's pretty damn clear just how bad, unbefitting and bloody cramped normal gamemodes and maps are by comparison.

5. Being greedy inevitably leads to bad things for a game. Case in point - IS vs Clan numbers, which is totally and obviously due to prices. Fluff aside, there is no sane reason to do this to your game if you want it to last and make profit.

6. The map reset right after the final battle is just a spit in the face of everyone who invested money and time into this fight, and I would feel the same way if we lost. Whoever thought it would be a good idea should be fired.

In conclusion, and despite all of the above, I've had great fun with this event, and it was because the fights were about something more than points or ladder crap. DO MORE OF THIS, it's cheap and makes people happy .

Edited by Urfin, 01 May 2015 - 03:05 PM.

[Chuck Jager]

Map reset will need to occur. The only option is to always have a series of battles that is always leading to something else that has never been mentioned in lore. I just look at it as a new season for the same game. Also there will probably always be some imbalance in the system. IS did really well leading up to the invasion because of the way people could stuff the que and then during the invasion Clan did well because some of those same groups switched over and there was not a way for the volume of IS players to overwhelm the clan (please do not quote lore, I am only talking about game mechanics). It is easy to blame PGI, but almost every game I play there is a steady stream of folks who migrate to the FOTM side and builds.

Other than the fun that may occur during the play the storyline is still just a story that can be edited the next time it is told

[Senor Cataclysmo]

I'm not sure if it is a money thing you know. I say this partially from observation, partially from experience. The IS are portrayed as the goodies in the vast majority of BT media. They're more fully explored and more fully fleshed out generally. They have more well explored characters. All these things make people who have a lot of BT experience predisposed towards wanting to play as the IS. If the first thing you read about or enjoyed about BT was from an IS perspective, you'll be more likely to want to play IS. Add to this the fact that a lot of TT veterans didn't like the introduction of clans to TT either. Just look at how many people wanted this game to be MWO:3025.

The same holds true for the opposite perspective. The first contact I had with Battletech was as a ten year old, finding the Jade Phoenix novels in a charity shop. I had no idea what battletech was, but I was obsessed with mechs. I must have read those novels about 20 times before I discovered there was a tabletop game behind this wonderful fictional universe. By that time I was a staunch Clanner. The clans (from my perspective) were obviously the goodies. They just wanted to show the useless IS freebirths the error of their ways through the medium of giant battle robots. I was actually shocked when I discovered MW4 and realised that the clans were supposed to be the baddies. You could even say my younger self was a bit outraged. Who would want to play as one of these petty, pampered nobles with their junk battlemechs?

Anyway, what this introduction to BT meant was that when it came to MWO, all I ever wanted to be was a Jade Falcon loyalist. I didn't care that it took double the C-bills, I just wanted to paint my face green and live out the battles I'd been playing out in my head since I was a child. It irks me that the clan mech packs are always $40 more than their IS equivalents (more bias in favour of those freebirths), but I still open my wallet because the clans are my BT nostalgia trip. I would bet a good number of clan loyalists are in the same boat as me. I think your argument only works for new players who arent familiar with the universe, and I think they're in the minority right now, at least until Steam.

Also re: map reset. Spitting in the face of people? Come, come. No need for such melodrama. It had been announced multiple times that a map reset was happening post Tuk. We knew this was coming. Besides, its not the *real* battle of tukkayid. You know we're testing an incomplete game? That's what beta is. They need to reset the map to see if all the changes theyve made to matchmaker and attack corridor algorithms actually work. Console yourself by thinking how much better the next battle of tukkayid will be.

[Urfin]

The argment for people being predisposed to clan/IS is valid, of course, I am an example of this myself (pretty much the same story with the novels), and I was quite surprised that the IS junk looked this good However, I'm not quite so sure that people with significant past BT exposure are a majority, and if they are, it's even more of a problem, because it means the game ain't attracting people on its own merits.

As for the beta argument, it's long been just a misused word. They have publically released, and have been taking money for quite a long while (especially in online game time). That they still call it beta is just a lame excuse for incompetence.

What I meant with the map reset is that it shouldn't have happened right bloody after such a tense competition was finished. It's just inrcedibly dumb from any sort of PR/community management perspective. They would obviously need to reset it, sure, but not in a way that seems to immediately invalidate people's efforts. It just shows they don't know the first thing about what people think and care about. What they achieved is just sending a big "#$%^ you! Your effort doesn't mean @#$@!" message. And it's entirely at odds with why this event worked in the first place.

Edited by Urfin, 01 May 2015 - 01:15 AM.

[Hayashi]

Mech balance is terrible actually. Timberwolves, Stormcrows and the ECM Hellbringer variant are quite ridiculously OP in terms of power per ton, while Gargoyles, Mistlynxes and Novae are pretty bad. On the IS side the Thunderbolts, Huginn, Stalker-4Ns, Firestarters and King Crabs are OP, while Locusts, Orions, Commandos and Awesomes are pretty bad. If the top tier cheeses for both sides are balanced against each other when the IS versions are given an irregular 10 ton advantage, that only makes the situation even more problematic in cases when that advantage doesn't exist - like, say, public queue drops.

'I can do well in X mech' isn't really a valid defense for an underpowered mech when you can probably do better in a normal/OP variant. I can top charts in Locusts and Mistlynxes, but in terms of match score, using Firestarters or Adders respectively gets me nearly 50% more.

Map balance is even worse though. Trying to defend in either a counterattack or invasion mode on the frozen CW map Boreal Vault is futile the majority of the time unless the players are greatly unbalanced - say, a coordinated 12man vs a PuG - and even so, -MS- only succeeded against our Steiner PuG with a generator rush 36-12; that is, 36 dead -MS- and 12 dead PuGs. Some lesser 12mans lose against PuGs on that map.

Edited by Hayashi, 01 May 2015 - 01:32 AM.

[Urfin]

I meant Clan vs IS mech balance as a whole, obviously. You'd have to be blind not to see how unequal the mechs are individually.

[Senor Cataclysmo]

Urfin, on 01 May 2015 - 01:11 AM, said:

What I meant with the map reset is that it shouldn't have happened right bloody after such a tense competition was finished. It's just inrcedibly dumb from any sort of PR/community management perspective. They would obviously need to reset it, sure, but not in a way that seems to immediately invalidate people's efforts. It just shows they don't know the first thing about what people think and care about. What they achieved is just sending a big "#$%^ you! Your effort doesn't mean @#$@!" message. And it's entirely at odds with why this event worked in the first place.

I suppose it might have been nice for the event item to be a hanging IS map showing the map as it was before the reset, but don't forget, we were only fighting on the one planet. The outcome of Tuk wouldn't have changed the map from what it was prior to the event. And like... we didnt really achieve anything, other than highlighting an issue with queue times when one faction had lots more players. And I imagine that's pretty much what it was designed to test. Our efforts *didnt* mean anything. This version of tuk didnt mean anything. It never did. Thats fine. That didnt mean it was any less fun or anything.

edit: also, Im pretty sure I saw a poll of the age of forum members that showed the majority of people here are in their late 30s or older. We're a community of mostly BT veterans. Whether or not the forum population is representative of the game population generally is up for debate, but as a niche game most people havent heard of I'd say its a fairly safe bet that its *not* attracting all that many new players. Im sure that will change when it goes to steam, but that is another good reason to have test-oriented events like this. You wouldnt want to have all those new players flood in and break the matchmaker, causing them to think the game is rubbsh and never come back. These are issues PGI needs to fix, and the best way to test the features is with events like tuk.

Edited by Senor Cataclysmo, 01 May 2015 - 01:41 AM.

[Moldur]

I found out that double stalker deck conga lines are ultimate, as are 12 man premades of all heavily quirked IS ballistic mechs. These things don't pop up during normal gameplay, but with so many games going on in such a short amount of time among so many players, it gave people a lot of exposure in a short period of time. New tactics formed very quickly, and some were the absolute cheesiest. a dozen Dragons and Jaegers have insane instantaneous damage output, especially when focus firing.

[Urfin]

You know, I found to my surprise that just 1 C-ERPPC + 1 C-GAUSS net me 1k damage pretty much every fight, so I'd say the on-paper damage doesn't really matter that much, for CW at least. And the only thing I like killing more than Jagers are lights, so I'm fine with their quirks, let em come Stalkers, well, they were always scary and tough, kinda used to it by now.

Edited by Urfin, 01 May 2015 - 11:05 AM.

[The Mechromancer]

Boreal Vault needs to be removed or reworked

[Kain Demos]

Senor Cataclysmo, on 01 May 2015 - 12:52 AM, said:

I'm not sure if it is a money thing you know. I say this partially from observation, partially from experience. The IS are portrayed as the goodies in the vast majority of BT media. They're more fully explored and more fully fleshed out generally. They have more well explored characters. All these things make people who have a lot of BT experience predisposed towards wanting to play as the IS. If the first thing you read about or enjoyed about BT was from an IS perspective, you'll be more likely to want to play IS. Add to this the fact that a lot of TT veterans didn't like the introduction of clans to TT either. Just look at how many people wanted this game to be MWO:3025.

The same holds true for the opposite perspective. The first contact I had with Battletech was as a ten year old, finding the Jade Phoenix novels in a charity shop. I had no idea what battletech was, but I was obsessed with mechs. I must have read those novels about 20 times before I discovered there was a tabletop game behind this wonderful fictional universe. By that time I was a staunch Clanner. The clans (from my perspective) were obviously the goodies. They just wanted to show the useless IS freebirths the error of their ways through the medium of giant battle robots. I was actually shocked when I discovered MW4 and realised that the clans were supposed to be the baddies. You could even say my younger self was a bit outraged. Who would want to play as one of these petty, pampered nobles with their junk battlemechs?

Anyway, what this introduction to BT meant was that when it came to MWO, all I ever wanted to be was a Jade Falcon loyalist. I didn't care that it took double the C-bills, I just wanted to paint my face green and live out the battles I'd been playing out in my head since I was a child. It irks me that the clan mech packs are always $40 more than their IS equivalents (more bias in favour of those freebirths), but I still open my wallet because the clans are my BT nostalgia trip. I would bet a good number of clan loyalists are in the same boat as me. I think your argument only works for new players who arent familiar with the universe, and I think they're in the minority right now, at least until Steam.

Also re: map reset. Spitting in the face of people? Come, come. No need for such melodrama. It had been announced multiple times that a map reset was happening post Tuk. We knew this was coming. Besides, its not the *real* battle of tukkayid. You know we're testing an incomplete game? That's what beta is. They need to reset the map to see if all the changes theyve made to matchmaker and attack corridor algorithms actually work. Console yourself by thinking how much better the next battle of tukkayid will be.

As someone introduced to Battletech by MW2 the Clans will always be the good guys.

[Richter Kerensky]

The Mechromancer, on 01 May 2015 - 11:34 AM, said:

Boreal Vault needs to be removed or reworked

Out of all the CW maps, Boreal is the one that sticks out to you as bad? Not Emerald Taiga? Not Canyon?

[Phlaago]

I dont think the maps are downright horrible as the OP says, sure they could be improved upon and while it goes against the grain of 15-30m slugfests i would also like seeing larger maps where actually finding the enemy before they find you is an important task, I would hate to play that against someone who was just out to troll and go into hiding though.

as for point 5, the mechs are prices this way because there are people willing to pay for it.
Holding more events with clan mechs as possible prices should help players who are struggling with cbills (or mc) migrate somewhat towards clan mechs if that is their wish.

Edit:
I actually like boreal, but I remember a few months ago when I as a new player was struggling with the concept of "invisible walls" or rather walls that do not even come close to being the size and shape they look like,
Things like this and also the "treeroot snag that stops your 100t mech on viridian" are bound to irritate newer players to no end until they either quit the game or become so used to it they dont notice it anymore.

Edited by Phlaago, 01 May 2015 - 12:30 PM.

[Lostdragon]

The Mechromancer, on 01 May 2015 - 11:34 AM, said:

Boreal Vault needs to be removed or reworked

I am not a fan of any CW maps.

[sundanca]

The battle was great. Much more teamwork than usual imo

[Tyler Valentine]

Right on Senor Cataclysmo! I was first introduced to Battletech through 'The Saga of the Gray Death Legion' as a seven year old and, while our faction loyalties may be different, I couldn't agree more with your point. It's all about the nostalgia.
I really enjoyed this event despite the multitude of glaring issues. As a constant CW player I can tell you this weekend involved a lot more teamwork and nail biting matches than the average trip to CW land.
How lucky are we, as Battletech fans, to even have this game, never mind developers that seem to constantly want to make it better (regardless of results). It is still in Beta and they have a lot of work to do but events like this are the 'trial by fire' that tests their current system and gives them the feedback they need to improve the game. Stay patient everyone and keep the comments productive and we will all benefit.

[sdsnowbum]

Moldur, on 01 May 2015 - 02:20 AM, said:

I found out that double stalker deck conga lines are ultimate, as are 12 man premades of all heavily quirked IS ballistic mechs. These things don't pop up during normal gameplay, but with so many games going on in such a short amount of time among so many players, it gave people a lot of exposure in a short period of time. New tactics formed very quickly, and some were the absolute cheesiest. a dozen Dragons and Jaegers have insane instantaneous damage output, especially when focus firing.

It's funny I played as Clan for the event and came up against so many Stalkers packs and roving Dragons that I learned some tactics that actually seemed to work against them. Always requiring teamwork of course, and sometimes sacrificing a few mechs in the process but always a worthwhile trade to neutralize such a major threat.

Stalkers - No team can ever stand in front of where a Stalker pack is going - cover, chokepoint, arty strike whatever they'll just melt you. If you have a line of heavy mechs standing where they want to go the line will get melted (maybe taking a few of the Stalkers down with them but not always).

If you get to their sides or preferably their rear their potency is reduced. Best of all is swarming them from different multiple directions at once. If they are shooting at someone else you can basically take your time, line up your shot and fire at will - you're unlikely to down them in one shot so might have to run or reposition after this.

Dragons - Dragons on the other hand require awareness and quick response. If you hear those ACs going off turn and get a few shots into them. They can only take you down if they get lots of uninterupted shots in. If everyone gives them a few shots in return they will drop quickly. If one catches you alone, or god forbid they have the high ground and/or you have no cover, you are toast. But same goes for any heavy mech really.

[Clownwarlord]

Urfin, on 30 April 2015 - 11:40 PM, said:

First of all, big thanks to the IS side, especially Kurita and Steiner - I haven't had fights this tense and fun for a long time. Our last fight was against Kurita, and it was wonderful and worth remembering.

1. Mech balance is surprisingly ok, except for the little ********, of course. Really, I thought it would be much worse. [EDIT: Clan vs IS as a whole, I mean. Individually, they're WILDLY unqequal, obviously]

2. Maps SUCK. Of all the things horribly wrong with this game, the maps are by far #1. Stuffing cover in a space is not level design.

3. Rushing objectives is a problem, and it's a problem because the idea of shooting static objects to win a fight lacks any sort of verisimilitude or sense. This is a game about stompy robots shooting each other, and having such rushes as an option/necessity is NOT FUN. Although it's a step better than standing in a square to win a fight, I guess.

4. After so much CW, it's pretty damn clear just how bad, unbefitting and bloody cramped normal gamemodes and maps are by comparison.

5. Being greedy inevitably leads to bad things for a game. Case in point - IS vs Clan numbers, which is totally and obviously due to prices. Fluff aside, there is no sane reason to do this to your game if you want it to last and make profit.

6. The map reset right after the final battle is just a spit in the face of everyone who invested money and time into this fight, and I would feel the same way if we lost. Whoever thought it would be a good idea should be fired.

In conclusion, and despite all of the above, I've had great fun with this event, and it was because the fights were about something more than points or ladder crap. DO MORE OF THIS, it's cheap and makes people happy .

1. I agree other than the fact there was basically 3 mech chassis used by clanners because of their superior ease of an advantage over any the IS had by mech chassis. (Stormcrow, Hellbringer, and Timber Wolf) This is not to say other chassis where not used just that the clanners had an advantage in this and they used it to the max (numbers prove it).

2. So/so the map designs yes can be better and I hope they do plan to get better at the map designs.

3. AGREE 100% when clans have a clear advantage of only needing to rush the 3 generators and then omega while the IS had to destroy Omega and get more kills it made it easier for clans to TAKE the territory and then HOLD the territory due to the objectives.

4. Yeah sorta agree I would like to see more options but then you have the issue Russ talked about and the buckets. Maybe get rid of something for something better. Community input is probably needed here the most to help PGI in what the community wants so not 100% just PGI.

5. The cost of clan mechs to the cost of IS mechs, well this is because the clans had better mechs so they cost more. C-Bill and MC wise because if you want to play as a clanner then you either have to grind A LOT of C-Bills or pay for them with cash because you do not have to worry about upgrades like Ferro, Endo, Xl engines, and other items. So while you do make a slight point the extra cost is proven to be from the better mechs you get than IS. Not because PGI is money grabbing (my opinion though so feel free to disagree).

6. Disagree! CW is in Beta and it is reset after Beta 1 is done on it, and now we move to Beta 2 with a fresh map and some new things in the pipe to enhance and change CW in ways it is and was needed. PGI also was up front that it was going to be done.

My conclusion is I agree with your conclusion event was fun and I hope they do more events like this (maybe not 50 points though maybe 30 or 40 instead? so more people get get everything and then have bigger unit prizes and faction prizes to continue to get people to play the event).

Edited by clownwarlord, 01 May 2015 - 05:28 PM.

[Urfin]

Clownwarlord, the clans don't have better mechs anymore, not really. What they have is typically faster mechs (and that only because you can't change the engine) with somewhat longer range weapons that need significantly more facetime on target. The ballistics are downright inferior, as are the lights. So, while I like them more for playstyle, I wouldn't say clan mechs are better.

[Hayashi]

Ballistics aren't inferior. Requires more skill to use to get all 3 mini-shots per shot on target, but they're far more critspace and weight-efficient than their Inner Sphere counterparts. Some of the best Clan pilots I've seen load uAC/20s and cMPLAS - it's not something your average CSTRK6x6 scrub can do, but they're far more effective when in good hands.

Leaving aside cGauss anyway, which is a pretty clear improvement on ISGauss, but still isn't a particularly good weapon unless your opponents try to trade shots with you at range - and if they do, they deserve to blow up regardless of what weapon you use, anyway.