Mordin Ashe, on 14 September 2015 - 08:11 AM, said:
I watched the video again and I must say, the attitude they are taking is the only right one. Previous quirks were "we just feel like that" and look how it ended.
That being said, Sean really has incredibly strong anti-clan bias. I can't see this guy speaking a single time without hearing "Clans stronger than IS". Not a single video without him saying that. I know the whole PGI is strongly IS loyalist because of their continous ignorance of Clan drawbacks and emphasis on Clan strengths, and, well, Sean is the posterboy of it.
Sean. I like your attitude in that scientific thingie regarding your algorithm. It is the right thing to do, and as a responsible consumer, I rewarded this PTS by purchasing more stuff. But damn, you hate the Clans! Why did you say A but didn't say B when speaking about the Clans? You say Clans have range advantage. Where, for god's sake, where? Have you palyed CW lately? Everywhere where range is involved Clans have nothing to counter IS ERLL meta. Is it our CERMLs that have higher range? Well really? With all IS Mechs quirked the way they are... catching my drift?
Another thing you comkpletely ignored. Heat. Yes, Clan Mechs can load up lasers and heat sinks, but unlike IS we really need them. You build IS Mech with 7 MLs, give him average generic quirks every IS Mech has now. Load it up with heat sinks. You do the same with Clan Mechs. The result? IS can fire how many times before overheating, 6x, 7x? Clanner can twice. Are you even capable of acknowledging this? No fight can be done in two alphas in MWO, that is why IS are much better brawlers and win 1 on 1 vs Clans so much. Clanners can perhaps core the enemy but thats it, you drop dead because you can't fire more than twice. You can, of course, downgrade the weapons, but then you are loosing your advantage while still not being as coll or fire as often as IS Mechs.
Another thing, beam duration. It is much more difficult for Clanners to make their imaginary damage bonus count when you need 50% more time to apply that damage. At this point in game it makes no difference between firing IS AC5 and ML - both are almost as fast! Sean, when was the last time you actually took out Clan Mech with 5-6 MLs and went shooting stuff up? You can do that easily with IS Mechs, beam duration is RIDICULOUS! Have you ever watched Thunderbolts firing their MPL meta?
These things look "okish" on paper but in game they make huge difference. Perhaps because Clans have no reasonable -beam duration quirks while IS has plenty.
Heat. Clans are hot as hell. Never mentioned. I've hard you saying some time ago that "Clans feel like they are cooler than IS". What a load of bull, just do the math, they are much hotter. Much hotter, requiring heat management skills almost no other IS Mech does due to ridiculously strong quirks. If you look at smurphy stats tab it may not look like much but hey, you aren't fighting smurphy tabs, you are fighting strongly quirked Mechs... You know that with proper quirks Clan ML hsa almost double the heat of IS ML, right? Right?
So please, please, PLEASE! Stop using that ridiculous bias of yours. Clans have slightly higher damage and some weapons take up less space. That is ofset by longer duration (transfered to flat damage debuff according to players skill), much higher heat (no quirks, higher base hear = huge difference), omnimechs that limit you basically to energy builds only (we can't downgrade pointlessly big engines for more space to take ballistics), higher price (never mentioned but hey, most players care about c-bills in some form).
Start mentioning these things! Why every time I hear you saying that Clans are stronger that IS but nothing about the rest? Why you say A but not B that balances that A? Would you be a politician I would get it, but when I see you in a video talking about scientifically measuring Mechs and then using this bias BS, tell me, what am I supposed to think?
That being said I don't protest the weapon quirks at all, most of my favorite IS Mechs need them to be anywhere near viable to begin with (yep, Catapults, looking at you). But really, you can't go about your biases like that... Stop being blinded, stop using words that were spot on one year ago when Clans arrived but haven't been true for good 10 months now. Please, stop being a jackass.
Truth is top Clan mechs are better than IS mechs. I show an example from looking at all tier one mechs in my original post. I play Clans most of the time. And most top players tend to bring Clans or the few IS mechs that are quirked enough to compete. Without weapons quirks for IS Clans are much better. They need to have a counter to the few weapons I pointed out in the first post.
MischiefSC, on 14 September 2015 - 08:37 AM, said:
I'm 100% on board with the foundational fixes. In fact I'm really happy to see we're revisiting the fundamentals and putting new concepts like the sensor changes on the table. That's all great stuff that got lost in the outrage.
The problem for testing is this -
did my new build work better because there was less Clan mechs on the other team or because it functions better? The weapon and performance imbalance in the PTS environment is so far out of scope IS to Clan right now that productive determination is next to impossible.
If there is one universal feedback from every forum and every comment, every single thread, it's this -
Need to balance weapons first.
I can't give you useful test data nor feel like I can trust the other changes that are being made with weapons out of balance as badly as they are. And in 'weapons' I include factors like hardpoints, hardpoint placement and means of deploying the weapons.
I'm 100% down for the sensor changes. I think there is a lot more that needs done there, new components, new approaches to the whole sensor/ECM meta that needs to happen to make it relevant. The current changes are a concept I'm happy to work with but in no way, shape or form are they a balancing factor on mechs for anything more than like 5% of a mechs viability. 1 extra high mounted energy hardpoint is worth more than every single variable for sensor balance. In CW IS vs Clans is at least 60%, often close to 80%, played with 0 sensor data at all. Sucks for new players but anyone who's played a while barely noticed after 4 or 5 games in pug queue. Plays like everyone has ECM.
I'm 100% down for mobility/big structure changes. They were largely invisible though due to weapon changes. The most massive buffs to structure equated to one half of one alpha strike for any Clan build I was playing, all of which were more heat efficient, faster burning and generally more agile than they are in live. I didn't even know Atlases got a structure buff and found them easy to solo without losing armor on any single component while in a Timber Wolf.
Same thing stated a million times. I get the intent. I get that the biggest overall changes you guys wanted to do was the sensor stuff and reworking mobility from the ground up. That's awesome, it's good stuff and let's keep with it.
It is however adjustments of 1-20% of a mechs total performance value while weapons are like 50-60%. To reiterate because this keeps getting walked past in all the responses I've seen from PGI, I don't feel like I can provide useful feedback or trust the telemetry gathered for the value of sensor, mobility and structure changes while weapons are out of balance. Keep what we've got updated on PTS, save obviously for the typos. We can make adjustments to it from there as a baseline. But we need to shift to balancing weapons FIRST, so the more nuanced data can be effectively tested.
Yes pretty much every one that know much about the game and is any good at it was telling them balance weapons.
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