160 replies to this topic

[Wildstreak]

xe N on, on 11 December 2015 - 12:39 AM, said:

I stopped reading here. Are you T5?

It is not a Tier thing, check the link he provided. Not saying I agree with him or with the guys in the link, just that Tier don't matter. Then you have to factor in others like this guy and how they go about things wrong to prove they are right.

Spadejack, on 12 December 2015 - 02:06 AM, said:

Have you seen the link i posted there? Of Il Mechwarrior? And he has alot of examples and proof about how good IS really are, specially when used by competitive teams... he compares it to clan mechs. Can you imagine those super-quircked-meta mechs in the right hands? Its just amazing...

Link doesn't matter, Il is wrong and if you use what he said as support for you, you're wrong.

[Jack Spade Ward]

Wildstreak, on 14 December 2015 - 07:41 AM, said:

Link doesn't matter, Il is wrong and if you use what he said as support for you, you're wrong.

Sorry to disagree with you, but im not wrong, the numbers do talk for themselves. That thing Il Mechwarrior did you simply cant do on a clan mech, no matter how hard you try and even youre against your normal pug...
Face the fact, IS is just to powerfull now.

[Jack Spade Ward]

CyclonerM, on 14 December 2015 - 06:11 AM, said:

I have debated this for so long..

I think the fact that many keep suggesting is promising. However, Spade, i think your particular take on the asymmetric teams solution might be somewhat biased towards IS.. Starting from 20vs10, which is a huge difference (not to mention a standard 'Mech company is 12 strong and i think 12vs10 is already a good advantage).

Without repeating what i said so many times, i still support asymmetric teams as part of a Clan vs IS revamp

I would say that PGI could do 20 vs 10 (IS vs Clan) if PGI unnerfed to the original state of the clans, when they came out. It would be alot dificult to Clans indeed, but that way, any clanner couldnt complain, since it is the LORE, remember, IS won tukkayyd because of CommStar, Economy and numbers on the field.
Read the solutions i made in the post i started

[Jack Spade Ward]

krolmir, on 14 December 2015 - 03:54 AM, said:

I will agree that Clan IS balance is better with a few standouts on both sides that need further reining in to be sure.

You haevent done CW latelly, have you? Its just stupid now... in fact, i see no reason to play CW, to get stomped by IS all the time. To get a win is usually against pugs doing CW, where they are unorganized badly...

Remember, the event was won by mercs, not clans... if those teams were IS, they would have won

[Brian Davion]

Spadejack, on 14 December 2015 - 03:15 PM, said:

I would say that PGI could do 20 vs 10 (IS vs Clan) if PGI unnerfed to the original state of the clans, when they came out. It would be alot dificult to Clans indeed, but that way, any clanner couldnt complain, since it is the LORE, remember, IS won tukkayyd because of CommStar, Economy and numbers on the field.
Read the solutions i made in the post i started

the PROBLEM with your proposed "solution" is it only works if the IS gets hoards of people willing to die as part of a greater zerg. realisticly whose gonna do that? you'll see some people going IS for lore preferance reasons, and some going for the challange, but the VAST majority of players won't want that. the only way to keep the IS numbers up would be to restrict F2Ps from playing the clans and require an active subscription to being a clan player.

another idea might be to insitute a seperate "salvage points" system allowing IS players to aquire clan weapons and equipment for their IS mechs. thus giving IS players a cheaper entry point, and the ability to eventually take the clans on head to head with their own tech.

over all though none of this works very well though. and the current system of quirks and mostly balanced tech is proably the best we're gonna get. fact is clantech was a stupid idea when FASA introduced it in the very beginning.

[Void Angel]

Spadejack, on 12 December 2015 - 02:06 AM, said:

Have you seen the link i posted there? Of Il Mechwarrior? And he has alot of examples and proof about how good IS really are, specially when used by competitive teams... he compares it to clan mechs. Can you imagine those super-quircked-meta mechs in the right hands? Its just amazing...

No, sorry - He starts out with the silly claim that "crybabies" got his precious Gauss Rifle nerfed, then throws out the claim that the Inner Sphere is actually more powerful, and the only reason that there seems to be parity is that the IS is mostly comprised of scrubs. That's a load of insulting and self-serving horse manure, with very little truth to it (while certain factors do seem to shift more newer players to the Inner Sphere, the argument that therefore nearly the entire faction must be new is simply bad, and dishonest; note how he says "most" so that he can tell anyone who brings evidence of their skill to refute him that they're just the exception which proves his rule.)

He backs up his claim with some cherry-picked screen shots, and some other people chimed in with more of the same. The thread then degenerated into personal attacks by page 2, and seems to have been locked. Of particular interest is that the ERLL 'mechs mentioned as super-abusive meta mechs got nerfed substantially on the Dec 01 patch. None of the arguments presented are cogent, and many Il Mechwarrior's in particular are simply illogical angry rants due to Gauss Rifles being nerfed.

Edited by Void Angel, 15 December 2015 - 07:47 PM.

[Jack Spade Ward]

Brian Davion, on 15 December 2015 - 06:52 PM, said:

the PROBLEM with your proposed "solution" is it only works if the IS gets hoards of people willing to die as part of a greater zerg. realisticly whose gonna do that? you'll see some people going IS for lore preferance reasons, and some going for the challange, but the VAST majority of players won't want that. the only way to keep the IS numbers up would be to restrict F2Ps from playing the clans and require an active subscription to being a clan player.

another idea might be to insitute a seperate "salvage points" system allowing IS players to aquire clan weapons and equipment for their IS mechs. thus giving IS players a cheaper entry point, and the ability to eventually take the clans on head to head with their own tech.

over all though none of this works very well though. and the current system of quirks and mostly balanced tech is proably the best we're gonna get. fact is clantech was a stupid idea when FASA introduced it in the very beginning.

I like your ideia, of salvage point or equipment, it could be very interesting.
About population on factions, ever since the first tukkayyid, IS has been the bigger faction, and it would be also. Imagine that the ideia of limiting teams to 60 member, has Russ said in the last townhall, we could limit more for clan teams (lets say... 50?) while IS teams could bigger (why not 100?). That would solve alot of the population problem.
Remember, IS mechs with the super quircks are indeed better than clan mechs, which is, in the very least, awquard... If IS mechs are to retain the super quircks, why not innerf clan tech?
By the way, the new IIC mechs are the new clan superiority, just because they can be used as IS mechs!!!! Im sure PGI will nerf them as soon as possible...

[Jack Spade Ward]

Void Angel, on 15 December 2015 - 07:23 PM, said:

No, sorry - He starts out with the silly claim that "crybabies" got his precious Gauss Rifle nerfed, then throws out the claim that the Inner Sphere is actually more powerful, and the only reason that there seems to be parity is that the IS is mostly comprised of scrubs. That's a load of insulting and self-serving horse manure, with very little truth to it (while certain factors do seem to shift more newer players to the Inner Sphere, the argument that therefore nearly the entire faction must be new is simply bad, and dishonest; note how he says "most" so that he can tell anyone who brings evidence of their skill to refute him that they're just the exception which proves his rule.)

He backs up his claim with some cherry-picked screen shots, and some other people chimed in with more of the same. The thread then degenerated into personal attacks by page 2, and seems to have been locked. Of particular interest is that the ERLL 'mechs mentioned as super-abusive meta mechs got nerfed substantially on the Dec 01 patch. None of the arguments presented are cogent, and many Il Mechwarrior's in particular are simply illogical angry rants due to Gauss Rifles being nerfed.

I can agree with you that he does not transmit the the info as intended, but look at the numbers... those cant be argued...
That is just one of his posts, he has some more, and older ones, where he shows constantly the superiority of IS tech.
In that account, those numbers are simply amazing... When i was in an IS team before being in a clan team, CW, as a davion, was really good and great. But something did bother me, there were no fights happening between IS factions... It was always easier to go against clan than IS... switching to clan, there were huge fights between wolf and falcons, jaguars and bears, bears and wolf... and of course, they would cease fire to go against IS. All in all, i never felt the clan superiority, i felt that clan mechs were always more dificult to use and be eficient. Once i got the handle of it, any clan mech could indeed be really good. After mastering clan, using IS mechs always seemd more easier...
The big diference that i noticed between clan teams and IS teams was that clan teams tend to be more serious, lore based and organized than any IS teams that i knew...

[Void Angel]

Those numbers are not significant! Nearly anyone can pull up numbers from their games and say, Oh, look at how imbalanced the game is, I did such great things with this build!" Particularly if they're good at using the builds they're demonstrating. I've seen his other posts - and the many other "crybaby" (to use his term) threads out there - and they all use the same bad logic and cherry-picked data. I've seen those exact same kind of numbers from the Clan side, cited as proof the Inner Sphere was disadvantaged. Clan apologists trotted out the same bad arguments, cherry-picked data, and hostile name-calling last Tukayyid, too - and not only did they still win this one, they still went Clan.

Let's do a little shaving with Occam's Razor, here. In your personal experience, your Davion unit would fight the Clans almost exclusively, while your Clan unit would more freely fight other Adjective Animals - unless they needed to unite against the Inner Sphere! Your explanation - that the Inner Sphere would fight the Clans because it was easier - doesn't account for the Clan behaviors very well. You've cut yourself shaving, as it were. If the Clans were under constant threat from the Inner Sphere, why would they sometimes ignore them to fight each other? Wouldn't they instead focus their efforts against the biggest threat? And that's exactly what you're describing from the Inner Sphere: they fight the Clans because that's where the action is - it takes forever to ghost drop against a planet, and it's no fun anyway - and the Great House units that share a border with the Clans don't want to lose worlds.

In order to really evaluate how well the Clans are actually balanced against the Inner Sphere, you need to collect data on a demographic scale and then analyze it a few different ways - such as filtering for tier, and looking at CW to compare and contrast with quick-play matches. PGI is the only party that has access to that level of information, so it's really hard to come up with an incontrovertible argument for or against balance. When people say they have an incontrovertible argument, it usually means they're not accounting for all the facts, or stretching the facts to cover more than they can prove.

Edited by Void Angel, 16 December 2015 - 05:59 PM.

[Sassori]

As someone who has played pretty much since closed beta (There were some gaps) the IS and Clan have two totally different play styles.

People who play Clan mechs like they were IS brawlers, will tend to lose if they face anyone who knows how to spread damage.

IS pilots who try to play peakaboo with Clan will tend to lose, unless they have perfect timing and perfect sniping builds.

What wins and loses CW is teamwork. Period.

PUG's are not a valid data set for /anything/ because they rarely work together, they rarely have builds that complement each other, and they only care about their own score/kill count.

A good team doesn't care about their own score so much as they care about /helping their team win/.

This makes all the difference.

In CW I've faced some good clan teams, some bad clan teams, and pugs of both varieties but the clanners that are /really/ hard? The patient ones. The ones who pick their field of battle and do fighting withdrawals to blunt the push and then when they have numerical superiority, push back.

This is on hot maps, with lots of lasers being thrown in my face.

IMHO, you want to put the teams to 3 lances vs two stars? Stock variants only. Get rid of the mechlab. Get rid of pin point firing, use larger individual targeting reticules so that you can't leg everything you come across. Without pin point targeting it'd be more about unit tactics than individual skill, it'd also negate the need for double armor, slow down weapons so they can't fire so quickly, allow heat neutrality, that was supposed to be a selling point. Get rid of reduced speed for engine hits, add heat build up per hit.

Do all that, then it's a bit more balanced, but this is all old news. PGI didn't build a BattleTech game, not really. They built a FPS with giant robots.

[Night Thastus]

Funny, a post was just made claiming the exact opposite of this one!

So, I'll post my exact same post, again!

Oh look, another pointless IS Vs Clan post!

I'll get the popcorn. You guys are providing the salt, right?

[Void Angel]

Night Thastus, on 16 December 2015 - 09:43 PM, said:

Funny, a post was just made claiming the exact opposite of this one!

So, I'll post my exact same post, again!

Oh look, another pointless IS Vs Clan post!

I'll get the popcorn. You guys are providing the salt, right?

Distilled from the finest bittervet tears - don't forget to try the classic "It's not really Battletech" flavor!

[Haralachan]

I don't know, swapping over to IS side after the last 6 months as a clanner, and going 3 matches in a row with a trial thunderwub, accumulating a total of 19 kills, 2200 damage, cumulative 1600 match score, 1 headshot and 21k experience with no deaths... Vs only being able to perform like that in my mastered, moduled, tweaked and practiced TBR...

Totally balanced. Ha! And that, sir, is why many of us are swapping over to IS to simply prove a point.

SWOL HAS ENTERED THE DOMAIN OF FRR! GOOOO SPACE VIKINGS!

[Ano]

Spadejack, on 12 December 2015 - 02:06 AM, said:

Have you seen the link i posted there? Of Il Mechwarrior? And he has alot of examples and proof about how good IS really are, specially when used by competitive teams... he compares it to clan mechs. Can you imagine those super-quircked-meta mechs in the right hands? Its just amazing...

I also read il Mech's thread, and I've read a few others by him. He's clearly a very good pilot, but that doesn't mean his views are accurate, or that he makes a good argument. In the thread you reference, he and a few others post very high-damage games in CW. Which demonstrates that a high-skill player, in a low-skill team, can do a lot of damage and kills. It says pretty much nothing about the relative power of the factions. I've only recently played CW regularly (and I've been playing as clan) and I've seen players with 3000+ damage in the small number of matches I've played.

As Void points out, the only way to determine whether those screenshots are representative of balance is to look at the match data from a very large number of matches and aggregate. PGI have the ability to do that. We don't, and so the best we as players can do is post personal anecdotes which, while interesting and all, are more or less useless for determining the state of balance.

Brian Davion, on 15 December 2015 - 06:52 PM, said:

the PROBLEM with your proposed "solution" is it only works if the IS gets hoards of people willing to die as part of a greater zerg.

Picture the recruiting poster:

"Join the inner sphere. Use inferior equipment against a technologically superior enemy with more powerful mechs and weapons. Don't worry though, there'll be lots of other cannon fodder er valued troops alongside you -- in fact enough that in a perfectly balanced game (hah) you'll only have a 50% chance of scoring a kill on an enemy mech (don't worry though, you'll probably just die in the first wave, so that takes the pressure off). Join the inner sphere, where life is cheap and your contribution minimal!

PS: this will only even come close to working if there are twice as many people on our side as there are on theirs. Bring your friends or we're all dead."

You'd have to be a pretty die-hard loyalist to read that poster and think ”IS for me!"

[The Basilisk]

Rushin Roulette, on 11 December 2015 - 02:54 AM, said:

Stopped reading there myself.

As to the OP. yes, I stopped reading seriously after clan mechs are inferior myself.

Clan and IS mechs are just about equally balanced right now. Some clan mechs need slight improvements, others may need slight nerfs, IS mechs need slightly toned down quirks in a few areas, but all in all the balance is 95% spot on.

The problem with all these players complaining that clan mechs are OP and IS mechs are OP is not that the mechs are really OP, but becauee players are trying to attack them with the wrong strategy.

Against clan mechs in an IS mech? Go in close and personal. Clan mechs have higher alphas, but heat up quicker, making close quarters fighting difficult.
Against IS mechs in a Clan mech? Keep your distance. Clans have much better ranges (with the exception of maybe 2 or 3 IS mechs), damage per weapon and speed. Use it to your advantage and take them apart at distance. Pull back while shooting and try your best at reducing their effective firepower and armour for when they do get close to you.

Spot on !!!
While many ideas and suggestions how to get the clans more CLAN like and the IS more is-trashy (like they should be) are quite intresting, they all have something incomon.

Work....time....complexity.

All things that do not go well or fast with PGI, witch is always doing the minimum viable thing.
ATM we got two pretty well balanced sides wich both have crucial strengths and weak spots.
While I got the feeling ( personal thing ) Clans are somewhat disadvantaged in PuGs ( undisciplined brawling etc )
they simply rule CW, especialy in defensive situations where they can use their range advantage to full extent and are less vulnerable to spread fire than IS Mechs.
Yes Clan as faction was better in CW because of the comp units.
And those units use Clanmechs because those are better for taktical operation than IS units.
You cant be very taktical in chaotic brawling scenarios.
You need structure and a reduced speed of situational development for better control.
This is easiely realized by using range as delay to get reaction time.
A main tactical point in MWO is concentrated, coordinated fire.
For coordination you need time and space.
Thats difficult in close range encounters.

[D A T A]

clan is useless and overnerfed, all clan weapons must be buffed, clan nerfs removed, all of them, even those on engine, and 10vs 12 introduced

[Karl Streiger]

IL MECHWARRIOR, on 17 December 2015 - 02:47 AM, said:

clan is useless and overnerfed, all clan weapons must be buffed, clan nerfs removed, all of them, even those on engine, and 10vs 12 introduced

seriously which nerfs should be rolled back? The range of the ER Small Laser?
You are talking nerf there and nerf here but I don't have seen any that should be called nerf?

But you should get what you deserve: Roll back all values to TT standard

Edited by Karl Streiger, 17 December 2015 - 03:30 AM.

[Lily from animove]

CyclonerM, on 14 December 2015 - 06:11 AM, said:

I have debated this for so long..

I think the fact that many keep suggesting is promising. However, Spade, i think your particular take on the asymmetric teams solution might be somewhat biased towards IS.. Starting from 20vs10, which is a huge difference (not to mention a standard 'Mech company is 12 strong and i think 12vs10 is already a good advantage).

Without repeating what i said so many times, i still support asymmetric teams as part of a Clan vs IS revamp

For assynchronity you should either give the IS more mechs/clan less or adjust tonnages.

But then you break the entire solo and grp queue because mechbalance would now happen on the "clanners are stronger" scenario. Which ultimately leads to clans dominating the regular queues. Or at leats those clanners being stronger. That just would kill all the inferior clan and IS chassis. Not good over the entire picture of MWO.

IL MECHWARRIOR, on 17 December 2015 - 02:47 AM, said:

clan is useless and overnerfed, all clan weapons must be buffed, clan nerfs removed, all of them, even those on engine, and 10vs 12 introduced

And how would you then balance the solo and grp queue? Or are you willing to sacrifice the IS mechs in these gamemodes most people play for the minority playing CW?

Edited by Lily from animove, 17 December 2015 - 08:59 AM.

[Russhuster]

First of all i do think Clan is in disadvantage; for some time a little bit, by the last 20% agility and additional heat nerf quite a bit. Some chassis even nerfed out of the game by now, and the sinking number of players on clan side will sooner or later become obvious, even when merc units are persuaded to choose clan side for an event.

What is the big problem with balance via the numbers one just has to use the one side clan other side non clan setup in the PUG as well, and 12 vs 10 will work just fine, loreconform, and acceptet by almost every Bettletech fan anyway. ( but bevore the shitstorm rolls again, i do know Lore is irelevant here)

In Case there are too few members to form an eual set of matches then in PUG constellations of 12 vs 12 (IS ) or 10 vs 10 ( Clan ) will set up, so, no problem, as there every mech already has an Clan or NON Clan Mech Marker the grouping shouldnt be the problem

Yes the Matchmaker shall be overworked to achieve this, so these constellation will be part of its repertoire
but the ammount of workforce in coding is definitely not as high as all the Nerfing and quirking nonsense so far and it will find a way better acceptance amongst the Players.

True balance you may find, just inside your own mind

But i know a inteligent Match maker will not happen, ( Not even one where you can actially chose the map you like to play or the game mode but that doesnt belong to this topic)

So the Player has just to realize MWO has very little to do with Battletech and the Mechs here have sth. like as much resemblance with Battletech-lore like a mole has with figure-skating

As soon all players realize this is no Batletech-Game but more of a kind of Mecha/Robot shooter witchs Robots just have similar names like known from BT one can accept this more easyly and find matter of factly some fun in the game

Edited by Russhuster, 17 December 2015 - 08:49 AM.

[Seth Kalasa]

PGI will never do the balance you described.
Because they almost don't care about lore, they care about playability for grass-roots, for people who are just playing and don't know about lore and don't want to know about it.
Their view of "balance" is to make IS and Clans equal but different.
And they will continue to rebalance until IS will win Tukkayd battle ))
One of the reasons of impossibility of making matches between 2 stars of clan mechs (10 mecs) and 3 lances of spheroids is due to neccesity of reprogramming the matchmaker, as they declared some time ago. Current matchmaker doesn't allow this type of fights.
Also, in some interview they almost all of PGI staff mentioned that they sympathyze to IS.
So current "balance" is predefined ))
The only way of making this game as it should be is to create a separate mode in MWO: "Hardcore Mode", where Clan mechs and weapons will be as should be and IS mechs and weapons will be as they should be.
This solution will not cross their plans to achieve their imaginary and unattainable "balance".

Edited by Seth Kalasa, 17 December 2015 - 09:38 AM.