17 replies to this topic

[Kshahdoo]

Say, if the game was true to the lore, i.e. better clan mechs with better gear being grossly outnumbered by the Sphere troops. Would it be any good? Would fights be interesting and could both factions get enough players to not suffer from long queues?

[Prof RJ Gumby]

No, because:
1. Hardly anyone likes to be the underdog in a pvp game. People want to be alphadogs.
2. That system would require more people to be underdogs than alphadogs, what would stand in direct opposition of what people would flock to
3. In result, alphadogs would not have enough underdogs to play with.

[El Bandito]

Yep, should asymmetrical combat happen, the MWO population would become overwhelmingly tilted towards the Clan side. Which is the exact opposite of lore.

Edited by El Bandito, 07 December 2016 - 03:53 AM.

[QuantumButler]

No

[Tristan Winter]

No, for the reasons mentioned above. The most powerful faction would be a lot more popular. This is why Jedi in SWTOR are no better than Bounty Hunters, Commandos, Scoundrels, etc.

But I wish QP queue was Clans vs IS, IS vs IS and Clans vs Clans. I know we're going to get QP missions in FP now, but QP is always going to be faster and more popular.

[Paigan]

Prof RJ Gumby, on 07 December 2016 - 03:51 AM, said:

No, because:
1. Hardly anyone likes to be the underdog in a pvp game. People want to be alphadogs.
2. That system would require more people to be underdogs than alphadogs, what would stand in direct opposition of what people would flock to
3. In result, alphadogs would not have enough underdogs to play with.

You are assuming a lot of things on the game mechanical level and there are a lot other possibilities that would make it work.

Consider this:
IS have triple the tonnage AND triple the Mech/wave count.
Meaning if a clanner can quickplay drop with 1 100tonner at the most, an IS player will have 3 waves with a total of 300 tons of tonnage budget (or 4 waves with 300 or whatever).

Would be still symmetrical on the player side (1 vs 1), but the IS guy would have a lot more "lives" and/or tonnage.

Or consider this:
Clans would have the better tech, but IS would have way more tactical support (artillery), consumables, field repair, etc.

Or with the new skill system:
IS Mechs could have a higher skill point cap. Something like clans omnis having only 30, clan Battlemechs having 40 and only IS Mechs having 75. I.e. IS Mechs maybe be technologically inferior, but way more flexible to tinker with, while clan Mechs come pretty highly optimized out of the box and that's about it.
Even to the point where a well and high-skilled IS mech would be on par with a high skilled Clan Mech, even despite using inferior equipment. Wouldn't that be cool?

Or the reward system could incorporate lore to a limited degree:
As a clanner, you only get a proper reward (match score, C-bills, XP) if you did triple the damage on the IS side for your Mech's size.
You Mech might even get locked for some time if you underscored too much (honor and stuff).
And if someone doesn't like that, well then maybe playing IS is more suitable for him.



There are a TON of viable, interesting, even MORE intersting possibilities to balance asymmetrical factions.

Look at Starcraft. Does everyone only play Protoss because one zealot is worth 4 Zerglings?
Bull$hit, all three races are roughly played equally.

Because different people identity with different approaches and as long as everything is roughly balanced, every approach is used.

The WORST and most DULL thing to do is to take a perfectly nice asymmetrically designed system and level it artifically until everything is equal.




And seriously, all you spity people above. Please stop only seeing the worst possible alternative just to have a pseudo reason to spew more spite. Is spite spite spite all you can do? Why not think a little constructive and creative?

YES, it is possible and YES it would work. It does so in a lot of other systems (one being BT TT, btw).

Edited by Paigan, 07 December 2016 - 05:29 AM.

[QuantumButler]

Tristan Winter, on 07 December 2016 - 05:20 AM, said:

No, for the reasons mentioned above. The most powerful faction would be a lot more popular. This is why Jedi in SWTOR are no better than Bounty Hunters, Commandos, Scoundrels, etc.

But I wish QP queue was Clans vs IS, IS vs IS and Clans vs Clans. I know we're going to get QP missions in FP now, but QP is always going to be faster and more popular.

They tried the faction based QP, it ended up with a 90% win ratio for clans.

So yeah.

Edited by QuantumButler, 07 December 2016 - 05:24 AM.

[CK16]

Right now if you want this, stock mode lobby and no quirks/efficiencies. You can do 5 v 8 or 5 v 12. Enjoy now you can properly bid as well.

[Tristan Winter]

QuantumButler, on 07 December 2016 - 05:24 AM, said:

They tried the faction based QP, it ended up with a 90% win ratio for clans.

So yeah.

I know. Clans were OP then and Clans are OP then, generally speaking. It's not across the board, but it's a trend.

It's funny how this was exposed and now they don't want to do it again because it exposes the poor state of balance in the game.

Maybe if we had more faction vs faction, they would need to balance the factions better.

[El Bandito]

Paigan, on 07 December 2016 - 05:23 AM, said:

YES, it is possible and YES it would work. It does so in a lot of other systems (one being BT TT, btw).

Clans being introduced to TT with their original tech values was one of the biggest mistakes in BT history.

[Dimento Graven]

I was thinking about this a while back and had an idea, which probably many of you have already had:

- Effectively rewind the game map to the 4th succession war borders.
- Isolate the IS to itself, and the Clans to the lore clan worlds
- Allow IS vs IS only, and Clan vs Clan only.
- Create more Clan factions (there's plenty that aren't represented in the game currently)
- Allow players to choose BOTH an IS faction and a Clan faction to play, so that they can play either in faction's battles (depending on mood, or whatever)
- Special events allow for a weekend/week long Clan invasion, where either people choose whichever faction they want to fight for during that period of time (Clan or IS) and then battle royale ensues (a Turkayyid thing), OR, allow only the top 3 ranked clan factions attack the IS, so on and so forth.

I thought this was neat, until, I realized that "Oh yeah, this splits an already extremely diminished CW population... It'll never work."

<sigh>

Edited by Dimento Graven, 07 December 2016 - 08:09 AM.

[RangerGee412]

In a private match definitely. In qp most likely not. People would flock to clans and only the diehard IS loyalist would play the underdog.

If people would play the clans the way it is in lore, then it could possiblywork, but we live in the real word so just about Noone would play the "proper" clan way.

Edited by RangerGee412, 07 December 2016 - 08:16 AM.

[Trollfeed]

Asymmetric balance would need completely different units for both sides and different approaches to the combat. At the moment clans are identical to inner sphere but just better at everything so it would get frustrating pretty quickly.

Good example of arena type shooter with succesful asymmetric balance is natural selection 2. Both sides are completely different but still competitive.

For MWO asymmetry would be a lot easier if it was more like operation flashpoint than unreal tournament. Bigger maps, dynamic objectives and more simulator like gameplay imitating war would give much more room to balance IS against the clans.

[Lyoto Machida]

RangerGee412, on 07 December 2016 - 08:14 AM, said:

In a private match definitely. In qp most likely not. People would flock to clans and only the diehard IS loyalist would play the underdog.

If people would play the clans the way it is in lore, then it could possiblywork, but we live in the real word so just about Noone would play the &quot;proper&quot; clan way.

Monetary penalties...give Clanners a c-bill (lol) and XP penalty for attacking a mech already being attacked by another Clan mech. Or for firing LRMs indirectly...whatever makes sense.

Give Clans back some of the old weapon values from Wave 1 launch and reduce the numbers on their side. Or just give IS a 30-50% tonnage advantage and keep 12v12.

This could all be tested on the PTS...

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Paigan, on 07 December 2016 - 05:23 AM, said:

Look at Starcraft. Does everyone only play Protoss because one zealot is worth 4 Zerglings?
Bull$hit, all three races are roughly played equally.

Conflating the type of equality within a game where a person controls an army to a game where a person controls an individual unit is folly.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 07 December 2016 - 10:47 AM.

[Mcgral18]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 07 December 2016 - 10:46 AM, said:

Conflating the type of equality within a game where a person controls an army to a game where a person controls an individual unit is folly.

Why don't you explain the TT Meta to him


Or the StarCraft Meta




Meta

[1453 R]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 07 December 2016 - 10:46 AM, said:

Conflating the type of equality within a game where a person controls an army to a game where a person controls an individual unit is folly.

Pretty much.

Protoss/Zerg comparisons fall apart when you remember that your choice isn't "one Protoss or four Zerg", but "one Protoss or one Zerg". At which point, the choice is blindingly obvious. Even if you get four extra lives, that doesn't really matter when the other guy can instagib you without effort.

I get that the "MUH LOREZ!" folks want assymetric fights. They want assymetric lore fights really, really, REALLY badly and they're willing to try and mutilate the game to get them...but they're not a good idea in MWO. You've got HBS' BattleTech, and now MW5 potentially, coming up for your MUH LOREZ fixes. In MWO? Rough parity of inter-tech balance is more important.

[MischiefSC]

This debate is why BT crumbled after Clan release and why the original TT developers literally nuked the game universe and started over with 1 to 1 balance IS v Clans.

There's a certain sliver of the gaming population that really, really wants to convince everyone else to be expendable redshirts to their scything uberpowerzed-epeens. They are *certain* that there's This magic design where we will je happy dying 3 times to each one of theirs and they can pretend to be powerful due to stacked game mechanics.

You can do this without needing to change the game though! Just actually GIT GUD. Be as good as you want to pretend you are and you'll be wrecking people left and right.

But they never do. I've never seen any really good players suggest something like this. Nobody really competitive.

That's not a coincidence.