The Clans should never have been available for new players. Instead, PGI should have set up Clan toumans as permanent units available by invitation or placing in a tournament only. This would have required more community managers (who probably would have needed to be players that PGi trusted) to set these up and run them, but then the Clan invasion would have been much more canon - a march which is only slowed by the IS throwing lots of bodies (and 'mechs) at the mysterious invaders culminating in a huge tournament scheduled for a couple of years after beta. Then there could have been a reset or a "truce" for a year or more in which Clan and IS forces skirmish on planets over and over again without any territory really gained or lost.
I understand (I think) why PGI (and especially IGP) didn't do this - they couldn't sell expensive Clan packs to new players who want to pilot their beloved Mad Cats (because they played a Mechwarrior video game years ago) and roleplay a Clanner if Clans were by invitation only.
That said, there isn't now a way to solve the problems people are complaining about in this thread - so long as PGI allows people to change loyalties (which in-universe can happen at any point - mercs have contracts, even Wolf's Dragoons famously rotated around the Successor States - or IS pilots can become Clan bondsmen) then you'll always have players and units moving around. More importantly, so long as PGi allows players to make more than one account, players can have a Clan and an IS account or even one for each Successor State. That makes money for PGI and so it'll never stop. Further, Russ himself has encouraged people to move around - I remember him saying that he wanted players to be able to have plenty of choice - that's why we have the contract lengths we have, so PGI support wouldn't have to change players' factions when they get unhappy about their choice.
It's not the large units' fault that this is happening - PGi could easily create large House units at any point if they had wanted to. It would have required trusting a number of players and give them some authority in the community, but that wouldn't have been so terrible, would it? The only other option is to only have random drops rather than organized drops. That still won't resolve the problem as players will still organize on Teamspeak.
Why are the large Clan units moving to the IS? I think it's just to make a point. Wolf made a point to attack in an organized fashion, made it to Terra and held a large chunk of the central IS for a long time, Yet they didn't get anything. If PGI wanted to let the map move so quickly and be semi-canonical then Wolf should have been named the IlClan, then a map reset could have happened. I hear a lot of Clan pilots who complain that it's just not fun to play Clan 'mechs in Quickplay, especially if there aren't 8-12 man organized drops, as the IS 'mechs have too many advantages at the moment. Have Clans been nerfed too much? Not that I see. The last set of changes didn't do much to Clan 'mechs - they got a little hotter, mostly. The balance moved to the IS due to the IS changes - especially the range, heat gen, and structure quirks. So, there are a number of IS 'mechs that are simply better at laser vomit and brawling than Clan 'mechs. Further, the Clans don't even have a range advantage anymore - a number of IS 'mechs can mount ERLLs with 25% range bonuses and -15% heat gen. The remaining Clan advantage is in weight - Clan weapons tend to be lighter than IS gear.
How do you solve the IS/Clan 'tech problem? There isn't a way now. Perhaps if PGI had made it so that IS 'mechs could only be stock or only slightly alterable [such as this: an IS chassis has weapon slots that have certain weights, so the same type (missile, laser, ballistic) of weapon system of similar weights could be mounted there - an IS LRM 5 weighs 2 tons, so that could be swapped for an SRM-6, or a PPC could be swapped out for a Large Pulse Laser or an ERLL and two heat sinks]. Clan 'mechs could then have swapped out Omnipods instead of components. What this would have done for the game was sell a lot of IS 'mechs (or at least a lot of the most useful ones) and a lot of components. Then, when the Clans were introduced there would have been a serious technological advantage initially. Then PGI could have have tournaments in which the overall prize was for the IS to be allowed to gain some reverse-engineered but inferior Clan tech - IS ER LLs, ERPPCs, XL engines, Ferro-Fibrous armor, and so on. Would this have been good for the game? Probably not for the casual player - they wouldn't want to play at such a serious disadvantage for years, fighting a desperate delaying action while the Successor States get geared up for serious operations against the Clans, but it would have made more sense and been more based on the Battletech universe.
Do I fault PGI for how things are now? No. They did what they thought was best for their game, I assume those choices were made based on what they thought would make the most players happy and so keep them in the game. PGi is a company and so they shouldn't be faulted for making money. They don't owe us anything, even if as Battletech fans we complain that maybe they're not being true to the universe's lore.
I think at this point we just have to accept the game as it is. PGI will add features as they can but we also have to understand that the game is meant for the casual player, not for the hardcore player. Is balance possible? Not really. There isn't any balance in the Battletech universe - the best 'mechs are around 75 tons and use Clan 'tech. They also use gauss and PPCs/ERLLs. Targeting computers too, for head shots. You can prove that to yourself by making your own 'mechs with the Battletech rule set - Heavies with XL engines have the best ratio of speed, armor, and weapon load. Assaults can carry more armor and weapons but run out of slots and are slow. Mediums don't have the staying power of Heavies, Lights are best for harrassing, and so on. That said, this isn't tabletop Battetech. The relatively large Battletech maps allowed 'mechs with gauss and ERPPC/ERLLs to have a number of shots at approaching 'mechs before the opponent could return fire. Indirect LRM fire was mostly worthless, so cover was even more useful than in this game. It seems clear to me that PGi didn't want that (why would they?), they wanted a fast-paced in-your-face game.
So, how do we solve the CW problem. I see only a couple of choices: players have to join large units, create their own large units, or just live with the CW PUG teams. Players will always swap to whatever faction will give them the best chance to succeed - so long as there is a need to balance the Clan vs IS experience then players will find the loopholes or exploits in the system the devs give them. The problem is that there is no tech balance until Tukayyid. The Clans were pretty much unstoppable - the only reason there were any victories on the IS side until the 25-year truce was that the Clans purposefully bid smaller forces than they had available to make it more fair and they still won. It was the 25 years of relative peace which allowed the IS to reverse-engineer some IS versions of Clan tech, train a bunch of pilots, build lots of 'mechs and organize a joint IS response. That won't satisfy a lot of casual gamers, especially the ones who only know Batletech through the Mechwarrior series of video games rather than pre-Clan tabletop Battletech.(or worse, through Battletech fiction which generally does not reflect the tabletop game). So, we can't win. PGI would have to make massive changes and more or less start over, which would be a disaster for the player base. In this era of the Battletech universe, there are lots of IS pilots with inferior 'mechs and fewer Clan pilots with superior skills and 'tech. If PGI wanted "balance" then the game probably should have been set in the Dark Age period or at least post-Great Refusal, then all players would have access to the same 'mechs and weapons. But it's not. So, as players we have to accept one of the following: either the IS has a disadvantage which is overcome by skilled units and numbers or that both sides will be artificially balanced. The former isn't good for casual players and the latter means that non-casual players will follow the meta and whatever is better based on what changes the devs make. Complaining about it doesn't really solve anything.
Edited by Alaric Hasek, 01 January 2016 - 01:56 PM.
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MahKraah, on 31 December 2015 - 09:56 AM, said:
