I'm always in 100% tryhard mode. I like to win above anything else. I got 1st place for TBRs in the OCT14 leaderboard, and I've spent pretty much all of 2015 playing CW on the Clan side with CWI. The following is a brief rundown of what I have observed in terms of balance since Clans came out:
- Soon after Wave 1 hit, a group of Lords and many known top tier players held private matches pitting the Dragon Slayer against the TBR. The TBR held the edge and won the majority of games, but these were not total landslide victories, and IIRC the VTR-DS side won at least one or two of them. This was at the absolute pinnacle of Clan superiority. There were no Clan nerfs, jump jets weren't "hover jets" yet, and the TBR bunny hopping animation was completely broken. The important thing to take away from this is that the TBR in its most OP state had a slight to moderate advantage over the VTR-DS, which was considered the best mech until Clans hit.
- The last time balance was tested via solo queue, Clans won 64% of matches, but with an average Elo advantage of 100-120 (source:
http://mwomercs.com/...balance-update/). We know Elo was a flawed system, however the Wikipedia entry for Elo does state that an opponent with an Elo advantage of 100-120 points SHOULD win 64% of the time. Russ stated that he was happy with those results, likely because they matched up with the predicted Elo outcome. This was after the first quirkening. The important takeaway to remember is this was before any Clan nerfs were implemented, and was also the LAST time PGI did any sort of official testing by deliberately pitting IS vs. Clan in the solo queue.
- In Tukayyid 1 the Clans won 52.2% of all matches, which I felt was actually LOW, given that the IS side was stacked with an average of 40-50 teams on defense, and the majority of them populated by solo players. The competitive premades on the IS side such as 228 therefore had much longer wait times between matches, and would not have been able to drop as often as a Clan premade. In short, Clan premades had a greater chance of running into pugs, and could drop more often = more wins. IS premades on the other hand, had a greater chance of running into a Clan premade, and would drop less often = less wins. This is why I feel the win % should have been higher for the Clans. The problem is PGI was using these metrics to judge balance, which led us to...
- The first phase of heavy handed nerfs came to Clans, including laser duration and cooldown increases for omnipods on the TBR and SCR. I believe somewhere around this time was also when side torso loss resulted in the loss of truedubs for the Clan XL, a penalty that mostly affected asymmetrical chassis and loadouts such as the HBR, but still caused symmetrical loadouts to suffer to a certain extent, as losing truedubs is more devastating than losing external heat sinks. Some of the negative quirks were scaled back from -3% per energy hardpoint, to -2% per energy hardpoint.
- A bunch of minor quirk changes happened between the original quirk pass and Tukayyid 1, in addition to a few minor quirk changes between Tukayyid 1 and the big rebalance. Overall they weren't too gamebreaking, with the exception of the TDR-9S quirk that got scaled down shortly thereafter.
At this point, I "personally" felt that balance was fairly decent. I joined MercStar for one of their IS tours and I took a bunch of the quirked IS mechs to get a feel for them, but my performance was about the same. Similar kills and damage for both IS and Clan side.
- The great rebalance before Tukayyid 2 is where things went wrong IMO. I think the quirk changes for IS were done well, in that it added more IS mechs total that performed well against the Clans, with the exception of the structure buffs. I feel the Clan XL speed/agility nerf was a little over the top at 20%, but was definitely needed. I personally feel if the weapon quirks for IS stayed, the Clan XL nerf stayed, but IS structure buffs and Clan laser nerfs were removed, we would have good parity. The extra structure + across the board Clan laser nerfs is what I feel brought things out of balance and in favor of the IS side.
- Tukayyid 2 Clans won 56.2% of matches, which should not have been possible from a balance perspective, given that IS only got stronger, and Clans only got weaker between the two events. This is a clear indication that Tukayyid 1 very likely had flawed metrics, and PGI may have acted on bad data, meaning the last REAL data gathered regarding Clan and IS balance, was the solo queue test in which Clans won the exact percentage they were SUPPOSED to win, given the average Elo advantage they had at the time.
Simply put, if that last solo queue test was correct, then the Clan mechs today are most certainly at a disadvantage. That's my opinion based on the historical events outlined above.
I justify my above opinion based on my personal observations and experiences:
- For the entirety of my time playing Clan, which was most of 2015, I had only managed to achieve a 4000+ damage game once, and part of how I accomplished that was by farming 2 AFK mechs. Within just one week of switching to IS however, I had two 4000+ damage games within 1 week, one of which surpassed my previous record damage as Clan, and neither of which involved farming any damage from AFK mechs.
- I've been stomped by superior teams on both IS and Clan sides, but I've noticed while being stomped as IS, my team's score is generally higher on average.
- I've led various pug teams to victory against large premades of 10-12 on more than 4-5 occasions during my first week playing as IS. I've also had multiple close games against large premades, one of which was a 2-3 kill difference match against a large group of KCom. During my time playing as Clan, the number of times I've led a pug Clan team to victory against a large IS premade is exactly: 0
- Most likely this is confirmation bias, but while playing with very good players in Church of Skill, SiG, or SJR, the times we would lose seemed to correlate with how many Clan mechs we took. On one night in particular in CoS, we had beaten a large group of SJR 2/3 times. The two times we won, it was a landslide victory, one of which was a 12-0. The 1 time we lost, we were running 5 TBRs. Once again, was likely confirmation bias, but there could be a correlation. Will continue researching.
Long post is long, but this is a general write up of how I've come to my opinion on the current state of balance. I generally enjoy the aestetics of Clan mechs more, so in a perfectly balanced world, I would run Clan the majority of the time. I actually enjoy the challenge of facing adversity, even though I said earlier I'm always in 100% tryhard mode. Being a tryhard and always being competitive doesn't mean I'll always take every single advantage possible. The problem right now is I've basically shelved my Clan mechs, so it's not only that I feel IS might hold a slight edge now, it's that I feel my Clan mechs will literally hamper my ability to win the game.
Once again, this is my opinion. I'm not trying to persuade people to change their opinions. I just want a freaking REAL BALANCE TEST from PGI. No "CW Metrics" that are influenced from a flawed gamemode with a dynamic population and skill disparity. No "Solo Queue" IS vs. Clans with an Elo/PSR deviation. I want PGI to do another solo queue test, and I want them to run it AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. Then, I want them to ONLY use the games where each team's PSR is as close to EVEN as humanly f***ing possible, with enough data to form a SOLID conclusion, and go from there.
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Sader325, on 31 December 2015 - 09:05 PM, said:
