407 replies to this topic

[Torchfire Katayama]

xSONOHx, on 11 May 2015 - 04:34 PM, said:

Wait, did people really call IS mechs OP? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAH!

Edit: You can prove that the IS is OP to me by finding at least one IS assault mech in the game that can have 4 UAC/20s with 70 rounds and a small laser. Oh wait, only clans have that for now.

uh.... 70 rounds 4 damage a shell is... let me do the math here... 280 damage? well worth it isn't it. oh but wait! after half those rounds have missed because its NOT one shell like the IS ac 20 we're only looking at 140 damage. But never fear! I've got my trusty small laser in the 50 kph walking tortoise wider than two atlasi

[LastKhan]

Torchfire, on 11 May 2015 - 09:41 PM, said:

uh.... 70 rounds 4 damage a shell is... let me do the math here... 280 damage? well worth it isn't it. oh but wait! after half those rounds have missed because its NOT one shell like the IS ac 20 we're only looking at 140 damage. But never fear! I've got my trusty small laser in the 50 kph walking tortoise wider than two atlasi

Also why bring the direwhale to CW unless ur in a competent 12 man group or base defense.. Rather not waste my 240 on it. To the reset in drop deck all i can say is, Meh. I would like CW to eventually do like supply lines stuff like if you're to stretched out your deck is reduced or something.

Edited by LastKhan, 11 May 2015 - 09:47 PM.

[Suzumiya Haruhi no Kerensky]

missing with half the shots isnt the weapons fault

[Freebrewer Bmore]

I understand this move IF the intent were really more to see how things play out with a re-equalized tonnage limit, now that people understand CW in ways they didn't at the beginning of CW Beta. However, if that is indeed the case then this represents very poor communication, because A.) it'd be at least courteous to not just spring it out of the blue on people who were planning to run now-suddenly-invalid dropdecks, and B.) yeah on the surface it sure does seem more motivated by the tide of battle than by experimentation.

That in turn is worrisome because it makes you wonder what the heck they think the real driver behind that tide of battle is. It's not about the 10 tons. Yeah, there are some disproportionately strong chassis, but 10 tons doesn't fix them anyway:

Pariah Devalis, on 11 May 2015 - 03:18 PM, said:

3x Thud, 1x FS9 = 230 tons. Meta deck UNCHANGED
2x Stalker, 2x FS9 = 240 Tons. Meta deck UNCHANGED

...and besides, much of the problem requires balancing gameplayers rather than gameplay:

Crockdaddy, on 11 May 2015 - 03:33 PM, said:

With the pop levels fairly low Having massive MERC cartels completely over balances the game depending on what faction they are fighting for. The tonnage had little to do with it ... the issue was IS currently has the bulk of the MERC groups so it should be no surprise that IS is winning everywhere.

I'm actually in one of those "massive merc cartels", only right now we happen to be Clan (which means I'm sitting out of CW for a couple weeks until we switch back, because I don't do Clan)... and yeah, I see how having units like mine bouncing back and forth and sometimes all lining up together wreaks havoc with the starmap. However, messing with the tonnage limit is not going to do anything about that. More incentives (for sticking with long-term contracts, or for breaking contracts to come to the aid of beleaguered factions) might. Even better could be to work out some different game mechanics for flipping planets that aren't as vulnerable to these kinds of population imbalances.

[Suzumiya Haruhi no Kerensky]

2 lights isnt a meta deck

[Fenris Kell]

LOL at all the 'sky is falling' people. I've done 4+ CW drops today since the change, and we still beat the clans in every drop. Stalker/Thunderbolt/Wolverine/Firestarter. And most times didn't need the 4th mech. The tonnage change affected nothing, except that some of us had to switch out a T-bolt for a Wolverine. As far as what is OP and what isn't...I'll Roll my 4n Stalker and Thunderwub T-bolt against a Dire wolf, and Timber, any day of the week. Feel free to friend me and we'll set up a private match. ;-)

[Tiamat of the Sea]

In a sad sort of a way, I find it a wonder that people are assuming the fluff reasoning given in the opening post of this thread is the actual reasoning for the change.

Rather than coming to the eminently more reasonable conclusion that the +10 tonne IS drop deck was an experiment they did that they chose to use during the Tukayyid event as well, and have now concluded and either decided it was not the way to go, or are currently working over the data gathered during that time to figure out what to do next.

[Torchfire Katayama]

Hmmm I'll just throw this out there, wonder what ballistic quirks the mauler is going to receive? My bet is something like

20% ballistic cooldown
20% ballistic velocity
10% ballistic range
12.5% ballistic heat gen
20% ac2 cooldown
20% ac2 velocity
10% ac2 range
12.5% ac2 heat gen

Could probably fit 2 of those in your Cw drop deck eh?

Edited by Torchfire, 11 May 2015 - 10:02 PM.

[LastKhan]

Torchfire, on 11 May 2015 - 10:01 PM, said:

Hmmm I'll just throw this out there, wonder what ballistic quirks the mauler is going to receive? My bet is something like

20% ballistic cooldown
20% ballistic velocity
10% ballistic range
12.5% ballistic heat gen
20% ac2 cooldown
20% ac2 velocity
10% ac2 range
12.5% ac2 heat gen

Could probably fit 2 of those in your Cw drop deck eh?

lol thats to much they'll do what they did releasing zeus by doing general quirks based on its variant type. i dont think 20%. More along the lines of 10-15%

Edited by LastKhan, 11 May 2015 - 10:05 PM.

[Suzumiya Haruhi no Kerensky]

oh man , ac/2s , so good

[Wintersdark]

Domenoth, on 11 May 2015 - 06:43 PM, said:

Edit:
And I do realize you did mostly focus on the complexity, but it's like guilt by association. Because you also said it would be no better than tonnage, your other valid arguments are likely to get dismissed.

Yeah, you're right. The complexity of arriving at the correct numbers are what makes it impractical. After all, would anyone argue that the current game balance is amazingly great, and all the weapons have appropriate stats? And this is after 3 years of tweaking.

My meaning, was that tonnage isn't particularly good, and isn't because it's essentially an arbitrary number without a strong connection to how effective the mech actually is - that's determined almost entirely by hardpoints and physical geometry. Likewise, a point based scoring system like TT's BattleValue would be very similar in that you'd arrive at a totally arbitrary number that doesn't actually reflect the real effectiveness of a mech.

But, you're absolutely right, and I'd hate to get drawn into a moronic argument about why BV is better than tonnage or whatever, when that wasn't really my point in the first place.

It's enormously complex to rate effectiveness in MWO, far more so than in Tabletop. After all, in TT, you know exactly what percentage of the time a PPC will hit it's target, so you can map out it's DPS very accurately. In MWO, the likelyhood of a PPC hitting it's target are far more complex. Flight time directly impacts accuracy, but to different degrees for different players. Weapon location is critically important: A Firebrand can fire it's PPC's while peeking just a bit of it's geometry out, often easily firing over cover, but a Banshee needs to expose a huge portion of it's structure to do it. An Atlas firing it's gorilla arm mounted PPC's will often have a far more difficult time hitting targets (particularly small ones) on broken terrain due to tiny rocks blocking shots.

Then, a change to PPC velocity happens, and increases it's accuracy... but how much? how much do you change it's score by? What about quirks, do you count them? How? PPC's vary in effectiveness dramatically between mechs. What about modules? Do you count modules in BV too? How many points is a PPC worth vs. a PPC cooldown module? Does it scale based on how many PPC's you have equipped? After all, a PPC Range Increase module is vastly more valuable on a mech with 4 PPC's than on a mech with one.

So... yeah, horrifically complicated.

I just get annoyed, because people spout off with this whole "Oh, we just need BattleValue, then everything would be Awesome!" but that's a huge can of worms. It's not at all something that can just be plugged in.

[Torchfire Katayama]

LastKhan, on 11 May 2015 - 10:04 PM, said:

lol thats to much they'll do what they did releasing zeus by doing general quirks based on its variant type. i dont think 20%. More along the lines of 10-15%

Eh well my reason for mentioning this was that if the mauler was a clan mech the quirks would have looked like

-10% ballistic cooldown

[Wintersdark]

LastKhan, on 11 May 2015 - 10:04 PM, said:

lol thats to much they'll do what they did releasing zeus by doing general quirks based on its variant type. i dont think 20%. More along the lines of 10-15%

Yeah, probably fairly mild quirks initially. Running 4 IS AC's will be very dangerous as it is.

[Suzumiya Haruhi no Kerensky]

thats 8 damage, almost as much as a single large laser

[Jess Hazen]

MechaNagato, on 11 May 2015 - 09:46 PM, said:

missing with half the shots isnt the weapons fault

behaves as a **** rotary ac thats shots do 25% damage. clans never get rotary ac. remind me why they decided to screw clan over with crap ac's please.

[Suzumiya Haruhi no Kerensky]

why are you missing over half your shots?

[LastKhan]

Wintersdark, on 11 May 2015 - 10:09 PM, said:

Yeah, probably fairly mild quirks initially. Running 4 IS AC's will be very dangerous as it is.

Indeed since the IS AC's are full dmg per shot makes this a beast of a machine for sure. 15% ACs would be waaayyy to generous for a mech that can house a good number of ballistics based on variant.

Torchfire, on 11 May 2015 - 10:08 PM, said:

Eh well my reason for mentioning this was that if the mauler was a clan mech the quirks would have looked like

-10% ballistic cooldown

This is also true lol. I wish the ACs werent so trash for the clans and according to pariah they are "looking into it".

[Rhalgaln]

Clanners are loosing because of the early quitters:

In every game I face the last 4 weeks one to 3 clanners left the game after the first shootout because the recognize playing vs a 12 man premade.
It might be that some of them have game stability problems, but this would apply to premades too and my teammates are able to reconnect.

Its hard to play vs a 12 man premade but with 1-3 pilots down you don't have a chance even using Clan Tech.


CW needs to be upgraded to the "End Game Content":
Only players with at least 40 mechs mastered should be allowed to play their mastered mechs in CW.
CW should only be available for premade groups.
The CW stats should be popular so anyone can compare his scores to other CW players.

[Nacon]

This gotten dumb.

[Telmasa]

Adamski, on 11 May 2015 - 08:28 PM, said:

You trollin right? The TDR has a compact model / hitbox? They gave it ST structure quirks because its so fat and juicy.
The 5SS has an optimal of 353m with quirks and modules, which is less than a IS LL (450) base range. I'm not going to bother refuting anything else you have to say regarding mech or equipment balance since its obvious you have no F'ing clue what you are talking about.
Yes, the 60% / 53% clan win rate does not represent everything, but it does represent the in match balance when done over a large enough sample of matches. (Tukayyid being an especially good example because you can drill down and see the different premade 12 man win%).
What the win rate does not represent, is population imbalance / territory gained, which is IRRELEVANT when discussing faction/mech balance.

It's flat. If you can't figure out how to twist your torso with a Thunderbolt and minimize your profile between shots (which, thanks to its quirks, is superbly easy), then you're blind. It doesn't need toughness quirks. I'm not the best Thunderbolt pilot ever but even I can rack up 800-1200 damage with my XL-engine TDR-9SE without even trying.

That's just wrong. And the 5SS is only more OP than the 9SE is, in both quirks & hardpoints & being easier to mount a STD engine on.

Those numbers not only don't prove "everything", they actually prove "nothing" about IS vs. Clan balance. Saying it doesn't represent anything about population imbalance is just ignorant.

Tanis McGavern, on 11 May 2015 - 08:37 PM, said:

You want IS mechs to behave like they did in BT canon? Why don't clanners start by behaving like clanners did in BT canon and stop focus firing/spawn camping/using arty and start demanding to drop in stars rather than companies. Never been more frustrated than getting demolished by clan lights swarming a drop zone shooting and dropping arty on anything in front of them. This won't happen, of course, but don't complain of disparity on one side and ignore it on the other.

No. I don't. I drive IS mechs too, in fact I drive more IS mechs than I do clan ones.

I saw far more IS groups during the event doing the spawncamp/consumable spam thing than clan ones, frankly speaking.

As I said, you're only seeing things from your own skewed single side. Play both sides of the fence, then you can start forming your opinions.

IS mechs can be fairly balanced against Clan ones without being given god-mode powers. Normalize all IS quirks across all IS mechs, nerf Streak-6s, give the Stormcrow the Jenner treatment, realize the Timberwolf isn't going to be that great once the Black Knight arrives when it comes to 75-tonner laser boating, and we'll be a long way towards achieving an acceptable level of assymetric gameplay balance.

MechaNagato, on 11 May 2015 - 10:12 PM, said:

thats 8 damage, almost as much as a single large laser

And it recycles every 0.7 seconds (and less than that if you have quirks). Sure it has some heat, but it's such low heat per-shot that it's quite managable despite what Smurfy might say.

I had tons of fun with my 4xAC/2 Jagermech-S before they came up with the UAC/5 jam reduction quirk, so I switched to the Jagermech-DD; when the Mauler arrives you can count on me making that thing the AC-2 boat from hell.

Try getting a full laser burn on me when I'm pumping 8 damage into you almost every half-second. (And can do it from a longer range than you can, too.)

Edited by Telmasa, 11 May 2015 - 10:27 PM.