Dawnstealer, on 18 February 2016 - 09:19 AM, said:
How is that different from now?
And your last point is asinine, no offense. I'm an IS loyalist and have run a clan mech all of one time (it was a trial and I wanted to make a point about the damage potential of Clan mechs). I'm not alone there: plenty of people don't want to run Clan mechs for a variety of reasons.
Not everyone wants the crutch of supermechs.
But very, very few. If you made IS mechs so weak that 10 Clan mechs = 12 IS mechs (and that's a huge gap, even though it doesn't look so much on the face of it), there would be a definite exodus from IS to clans. Initially, a big chunk, but over time?
People, for all their talk, don't like losing. And given equal skill, in a 10v12 balance scheme, and IS player would lose to the Clan player almost every time.
Now, lots of people say they like to play the underdog, fighting against the odds. Some - very few- legitimately mean it. But in almost every case, those people change their minds when presented with a situation where they'll simply end up losing repeatedly in a game like this.
Consider: as the meta shifts, how much you see mech usage change right now, even with minor balance changes. It's huge.
You'd have a couple - a precious few - holding out for their faction and the vast, vast majority shift over to clans, because getting your *** kicked repeatedly gets old really fast.
And, yeah, its nothing like now. Clan vs IS balance is the best its ever been, with IS sporting a good many truly tier 1 mechs. But even when it was poor, 10v12? Get two early kills without significant damage to your team in a quick play match and that match was - and is - over.