56 replies to this topic

[MovinTarget]

I can't find the thread but a few weeks back some people were complaining that Clan mechs were, in fact, inferior to IS mechs.

You can compare hardpoints, loadouts, and quirks all you want, but in the end, in FP anyway, it comes down to Wins and losses.

So lets take a look at the current FP leaderboard:



At first glance you'd think that apart from Jade Falcon, the IS is CURB STOMPING the clans, right?

Lets look closer...

Total Clan wins: 354,553
Total IS wins: 491,977

But wait, the population of IS is higher than clans, so we can't compare 4 v 6 factions...

I can't tell you exactly what the population distribution truly is but what if we just did the top 4 IS factions? (Sorry Liao, Marik)

Total Clan wins: 354,553
Total IS T4 wins: *358,394*

If Clans are so vastly inferior, why are they only short ~ 4k wins? Yes, this is cutting out 2 factions.

Yes, this is assuming that the 4 on each side are roughly the same population.

Compare the Losses now:
Total Clan Losses: 297,491
Total IS T4 Losses: *329,285*

So Clans have in general, won fewer but lost WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY fewer if you compare the top 4 (and the last 2 IS factions ain't gonna help on this one...)


So whats the WL?

Clan W/L: 354,553/297,491 = 1.19
IS T4 W/L: 358,394/329,285 = 1.09

That's pretty freaking close to balanced if you ask me.

The thing I can't take into account is that IS tends to fight amongst themselves way more than clan...

That would be good to take into account when arguing tech superiority, seeing how IS v IS W/L would cancel out for this exercise...


Did I make sense?

[LordNothing]

ive always felt that the balance is at an all time high. people are still parroting the mantras people were chanting from many months ago when the deck tonnages were all over the place.

[Battlemaster56]

Ok so I see Faction stats, but I don't see how mechs are involved of what the title say at all, until I see how clan mechs are more balanced than we thought I'm calling this title misleading at best...

[MovinTarget]

Battlemaster56, on 12 June 2016 - 01:32 PM, said:

Ok so I see Faction stats, but I don't see how mechs are involved of what the title say at all, until I see how clan mechs are more balanced than we thought I'm calling this title misleading at best...

Not sure I follow the question...

This is only taking Faction Play games into account.

Clan Factions (Jade Falcon, Smoke Jaguar, Wolf, and Ghost Bear) only drop in clan mechs. IS factions (Steiner, FRR, Davion, Kurita, Liao, and Marik) only drop in IS mechs.

This is as close to large scale metrics as we are going to get as far as I know...

[Battlemaster56]

MovinTarget, on 12 June 2016 - 01:37 PM, said:

Not sure I follow the question...

This is only taking Faction Play games into account.

Clan Factions (Jade Falcon, Smoke Jaguar, Wolf, and Ghost Bear) only drop in clan mechs. IS factions (Steiner, FRR, Davion, Kurita, Liao, and Marik) only drop in IS mechs.

This is as close to large scale metrics as we are going to get as far as I know...

Alright one faction use one set of mechs while the other set of mechs, but most faction warfare matches I went through has usually just ended in tactics and trying to end the match with little to no fighting in it(maybe I'm not getting into a lot of those full on brawls)
Even if a fight goes on most cw maps favor brawling and that favor IS mechs much more than clans unless they build spl+srms into their builds even so IS have so much in their favor with duration structure and agility the clans only have nice alphas speed(sorta) and xl but then thats favor only so many clan mechs right now.

[MovinTarget]

Battlemaster56, on 12 June 2016 - 01:45 PM, said:

Alright one faction use one set of mechs while the other set of mechs, but most faction warfare matches I went through has usually just ended in tactics and trying to end the match with little to no fighting in it(maybe I'm not getting into a lot of those full on brawls)
Even if a fight goes on most cw maps favor brawling and that favor IS mechs much more than clans unless they build spl+srms into their builds even so IS have so much in their favor with duration structure and agility the clans only have nice alphas speed(sorta) and xl but then thats favor only so many clan mechs right now.

What you are citing is personal experience and circumstantial evidence. Thats what we are trying to get away from. These are the numbers from the game itself, unfiltered as best as possible and if you were to square up the top 4 IS vs the Clans, their W/L OVERALL is very similar.

[Battlemaster56]

MovinTarget, on 12 June 2016 - 01:48 PM, said:

What you are citing is personal experience and circumstantial evidence. Thats what we are trying to get away from. These are the numbers from the game itself, unfiltered as best as possible and if you were to square up the top 4 IS vs the Clans, their W/L OVERALL is very similar.

Ok I see your point but I don't see how Faction Warfare really prove if one such mech is balance, it may tell what people use the most over another mech for example and Orion IIC why would someone take that over a Timberwolf, Cauldron Born or Hellbringer if they can do what the Orion do but better


I don't know what is true balance and what's not but if their no real incentive to play such mech over another then their no real balance inside the faction's mechs

[Chagatay]

I agree for the most part. Outside of a few outliers balance is fairly even.

However, I do think that IS has a distinct advantage in midrange combat and this manifests itself much more on FP maps especially Sulfur/Vitric which also are very hot. As Battlemaster56 has pointed out, clan mechs armed with cSPL/SRMs are evenly matched against IS mechs at very close ranges.

In quick play matches, I might even go far as to say Clan mechs are better overall as cLPL is still a dominating weapon at all ranges. Kodiak is obviously a very powerful assault and probably the first viable clan assault with no serious handicaps (dire wolf is good but too slow for any maneuvers). Timbers, Stormcrows, Hellbringers, Ebon Jags, Cheetos, Jenners are all decent.

In short, balance is probably the best it has ever been.

Edited by Chagatay, 12 June 2016 - 02:04 PM.

[MovinTarget]

Battlemaster56, on 12 June 2016 - 01:58 PM, said:

Ok I see your point but I don't see how Faction Warfare really prove if one such mech is balance, it may tell what people use the most over another mech for example and Orion IIC why would someone take that over a Timberwolf, Cauldron Born or Hellbringer if they can do what the Orion do but better


I don't know what is true balance and what's not but if their no real incentive to play such mech over another then their no real balance inside the faction's mechs

Some people are saying that IS mechs are flat out better than Clan mechs. you can't compare Quick Play stats easily since they mix the tech on teams. Faction play there are only 3 possiblities:

All IS Mechs vs All Clan Mechs (i.e. Steiner vs Jade Falcon)

All IS Mechs vs All IS Mechs (i.e. Kurita vs Davion)

All Clan Mechs vs All Clan Mechs (i.e. Smoke Jaguars vs Wolf)

Since we can't distinguish any of these in the stats provided, I am just rolling with what we have...

What the stats say are that the top 4 IS factions win *slightly* more than Clan, but Clan lose much less than IS.

When you look at their overall W/L numbers, they are within .1 of one another...

One thing that can be pointed out is that IS has played ~30K matches (games by individuals that may be on the same team), but thats not even 5% of the total matches for IS...

Edited by MovinTarget, 12 June 2016 - 02:11 PM.

[Sabertooth1966]

For the purposes of this thread I would suggest just using the FRR and Jade Falcon stats. I believe that since phase 3 launched the FRR has done very little fighting against other IS houses. Also the wolfs and bears were just getting stomped from what I gather, i.e. just playing poorly.

Edited by Sabertooth1966, 12 June 2016 - 02:12 PM.

[MovinTarget]

I didn't want to pick factions because I wanted to try to get a large sample of population.

Even if the clans were doing as poorly as you suggested, they are not doing so bad as to put the W/L in the negative for clans as a whole.

[Battlemaster56]

MovinTarget, on 12 June 2016 - 02:08 PM, said:

Some people are saying that IS mechs are flat out better than Clan mechs. you can't compare Quick Play stats easily since they mix the tech on teams. Faction play there are only 3 possiblities:

All IS Mechs vs All Clan Mechs (i.e. Steiner vs Jade Falcon)

All IS Mechs vs All IS Mechs (i.e. Kurita vs Davion)

All Clan Mechs vs All Clan Mechs (i.e. Smoke Jaguars vs Wolf)

Since we can't distinguish any of these in the stats provided, I am just rolling with what we have...

What the stats say are that the top 4 IS factions win *slightly* more than Clan, but Clan lose much less than IS.

When you look at their overall W/L numbers, they are within .1 of one another...

One thing that can be pointed out is that IS has played ~30K matches (games by individuals that may be on the same team), but thats not even 5% of the total matches for IS...

Wasn't going with quick play since it have mix tech teams

In CW/FW
it's a small select of IS mechs vs a small select of Clan mechs
and so on, as long as I remember when keeping track on some balance changes and stuff, but really only these small group of mechs is balance against that small group of mechs with others getting little to no real changes to them.

[Karl the Plumber]

Don't forget that clanners can't fight clanners. Right now only IS factions are attacking each other.

[MovinTarget]

Karl the Plumber, on 12 June 2016 - 02:20 PM, said:

Don't forget that clanners can't fight clanners. Right now only IS factions are attacking each other.

MovinTarget, on 12 June 2016 - 12:56 PM, said:

The thing I can't take into account is that IS tends to fight amongst themselves way more than clan...

That would be good to take into account when arguing tech superiority, seeing how IS v IS W/L would cancel out for this exercise...

Already noted. Working with the best I've got...

I can't tell you who won/lost vs who... only that raw numbers... Just remember that the IS vs IS games would subtract equally from both IS wins and losses so the impact would not be one-sided anyway.

Edited by MovinTarget, 12 June 2016 - 02:31 PM.

[Pariah Devalis]

Maybe I missed it, but, while I like the data, there might be a flaw with it. Specifically, I wonder how valid it would be to correct for the population differences given the way matches are set up in the first place. It takes 24 to tango, after all, so unless those extra IS victories are purely ghost drops, you're still looking at the overall results of 12v12 and 4v4 matchups. Clan mechs are fighting IS mechs in equal games.

Edit: Though the whole IS vs IS thing going on does muddy the numbers a bit, too.

Edited by Pariah Devalis, 12 June 2016 - 02:59 PM.

[Aylward]

your numbers and premise are horribly skewed.. they would only apply if we were ALL going clan vs IS the whole time and that has NOT been the case. stop this train now.

[MovinTarget]

Yes yes yes i know there are flaws here. However, i don't know it is so much so to negate the assertion that neither side is overwelmingly op vs the other.

Top 4 IS have won 4k more...

Clan have lost 10k fewer...

Top 4 IS have played 30k more (drop in the bucket with 700k total IS)...

There is nothing jumping out at me saying things are horribly imbalanced between clan and IS...

[MovinTarget]

Aylward, on 12 June 2016 - 03:01 PM, said:

your numbers and premise are horribly skewed.. they would only apply if we were ALL going clan vs IS the whole time and that has NOT been the case. stop this train now.

Please show the math as to how it is horribly skewed. I concede it will not be perfect until the share stats of wins vs clans, wins vs IS, etc.

Just consider:

Say all of IS had 100k wins and 100k losses. Now consider if davion and kurita fought each other in invasion mode 10 times. It doesn't matter who won/lost of those ten games. The IS W/L would be 120/120 or 1.0. It would not in itself skew the numbers one way or the other.

The only thing i could change is factoring in liao and marik which would give clans a bit more of an edge in overall w/l, but further skews the population comparison.

I agree there is no public data that allows us to see unequivocally how balanced the sides are, but my assertion is that those that say IS has the clear edge and that clan mechs suck or vice versa, may be speaking anecdotally and not empirically.

Edited by MovinTarget, 12 June 2016 - 03:20 PM.

[MovinTarget]

Lets factor in Liao and Marik for win/loss...

Doing this on my phone so bear with me...
Top 4 wins + Liao + Marik

358,394 + 73,745 + 59,838 = 491,977

Same for losses:
329,285 + 69,042 + 59,712 = 458,039

So the full IS W/L is:

491,977/ 458,039 = 1.07...

Heyyyy. Add them in and they are even closer to balanced...

I see having both sides having positive w/l is.... weird. However, it doesn't disprove my assertion that they are closed to balanced either...

[MovinTarget]

Iguess these results don't account for ghost drop wins...

Seeing how wins and losses are attributed to players and not factions, any ghost drop would give the winning faction 12 "win points" and the losing faction *0* "loss points"

Of course that would be another stat to capture...

Does anyone think one side gets more ghost drops than the other? Like, THOUSANDS more? Otherwise the argument that there is some semblance of balance still stands...

Edited by MovinTarget, 12 June 2016 - 04:06 PM.