84 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

BLOOD WOLF, on 13 December 2016 - 10:55 PM, said:

I am not going to address a strawman. I am done with that, and it gets me nowhere.
My view is what did that team do to win, because clearly the IS can win. If they can win, then they can win a majority.

Thats my main point, but continue to straw man, I will even put it in bold so its obvious when you do attempt another fallacious statement.

No, that's your 'one time in band camp' assumption right there.

'It happened one time in a one-off situation so it can happen the majority of the time'.

No, what happens the majority of the time can be easily identified - by looking at the majority of the results. We don't have to make any assumptions here, we can look at the last 2 years of telemetry. More recently we can look at the results of CW 3, as the most recent example that largely mirrors the tech balance we have now.

You keep taking small anecdotal examples (such as your own preference for the Spirit Bear vs the KDK 3) and attempting to translate that into fact. I suck at lights; I sucked with lights even with lights were great. I was always bad at lights. However that doesn't mean lights are objectively bad. Right now they are disadvantaged but not because I'm bad with them. There's a huge difference. One is anecdotal, the other identified via statistical analysis.

Small tech advantage to Clans + plethora of bad IS pugs motivated population shift to Clans of units. Units dramatically > pugs. This exacerbates stomps, which increases the perception of Clan tech advantage (not really that big) and relative badness of IS pugs (really is that bad), which motivates units to move to Clans. Irrelevance of factions strongly impacts IS loyalist units who were still around, leads back to step 1....

[C H E E K I E Z]

When i see a Kodiak, all i see is a free 400 damage im going to do to them, Same thing when im on clan side and i see an Atlas, If you want to see a scary mech, take out a Legend killer, with 2lbx10's, 4 small pulse. That 60 ton mech will SHRED a K3.

[BLOOD WOLF]

MischiefSC, on 13 December 2016 - 11:09 PM, said:

Gonna skip the nonsense and get to the real question.

Why do any units in the IS win any matches at all?

Can't all be luck and pug stomps, but knowing you, you're going to claim that.

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 13 December 2016 - 11:20 PM.

[C H E E K I E Z]

BLOOD WOLF, on 13 December 2016 - 11:12 PM, said:

Gonna skip the nonsense and get to the real question.

Why do any units in the IS win any matches at all?

Can't all be luck and pug stomps, but knowing you, you're going to claim that.

Well, when i drop with Mj12, every clanner calls them hackers..so, Hacking obviously, But then again, if i drop with Evil its the same thing. /Shrug, All i have to say about this whole thing is, ARE YOU GETTING MATCHES? yes? GOOOD. STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. Thanks pgi, for taking a game mode that used to have 3-4 hours without matches, have matches playing all day/night, NOW that there are actually matches, we can take the next step to see wtf we need to do with them to make them better, and to be honest, that 15 tons, give that to high tier IS teams, and let them face high tier Clan teams, and OH BABY, i can already hear the crying about how IS does not have to take lights/mediums anymore (oh wait, clan could do that all the time) =p

[Monkey Lover]

BLOOD WOLF, on 13 December 2016 - 11:12 PM, said:

Gonna skip the nonsense and get to the real question.

Why do any units in the IS win any matches at all?

Can't all be luck and pug stomps, but knowing you, you're going to claim that.

In my matches we're only winning with the clan team screws up. When the clan teams hold tight,doesn't take junk clan mechs and move as a team we're not winning.

On the flip side in group Q same people i play with often but with mixed mechs we would win 50% of the time even when the other team plays just as good.

There is a still a big issue with balance.

[BLOOD WOLF]

Monkey Lover, on 13 December 2016 - 11:17 PM, said:

In my matches we're only winning with the clan team screws up. When the clan teams hold tight,doesn't take junk clan mechs and move as a team we're not winning.

On the flip side in group Q same people i play with often but with mixed mechs we would win 50% of the time even when the other team plays just as good.

There is a still a big issue with balance.

I did average 1.5k damage when I wad dropping, and we had people doing near 3k. I see a valid argument to be made against that.

When you say balance, what exactly do you mean? make clan meds do the dame damage as IS

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 13 December 2016 - 11:25 PM.

[MischiefSC]

BLOOD WOLF, on 13 December 2016 - 11:12 PM, said:

Gonna skip the nonsense and get to the real question.

Why do any units in the IS win any matches at all?

Can't all be luck and pug stomps, but knowing you, you're going to claim that.

So, again, you're erroneously conflating 'it happened one time' with 'it can happen every time' .

Even beyond that you're conflating 'this one group did this one thing this one time' with 'every group can do this one thing every time'.

To help you understand the gulf between those concepts is not going to happen on an internet forum. That you've (assumptive) made it to the age of majority without understanding the difference between those is a curious bit of probability right there.

Not insulting you here - responding, directly, to your question. More to the point the fact that your question seems to be completely oblivious to the nature of what it's asking. I'm not even sure where to begin without it being really condescending.

[BLOOD WOLF]

MischiefSC, on 13 December 2016 - 11:26 PM, said:

So, again, you're erroneously conflating 'it happened one time' with 'it can happen every time' .

I am not conflating anything, and stop asserting that I am. I am asking a question that is a fact of the matter, That IS do win matches. The IS didn't win one match and just lost the rest.

So the question is once again is why does any IS team win any match? Accounting for extremes such as pug stomping, when you look at the Planet New OSLO between Bears and Ras, the Ras won a good number. Some of those were Unit vs Unit, and not Unit vs PUGS. So how did the IS win?

That is the question that is being avoided.

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 13 December 2016 - 11:35 PM.

[Monkey Lover]

BLOOD WOLF, on 13 December 2016 - 11:21 PM, said:

I did average 1.5k damage when I wad dropping, and we had people doing near 3k. I see a valid argument to be made against that.

When you say balance, what exactly do you mean? make clan meds do the dame damage as IS

With the new skill tree coming its hard to say what needs to be done. This could flip everything around again.

We need small tweaks, balance isn't crazy off. I would like to see something effect them all equally but nothing to do with heat. Im already sick of dealing with clan heat on my mechs. Maybe they need to slow down even more when they drop one of the sides. I still think they're a little to powerful after 1/3 of the mech is blown away.

1 ton target computer is a little to op. You basically get Is quirks for the cost of 1 ton.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 13 December 2016 - 11:40 PM.

[BLOOD WOLF]

Monkey Lover, on 13 December 2016 - 11:33 PM, said:

With the new skill tree coming its hard to say what needs to be done. This could flip everything around again.

We need small tweaks, balance isn't crazy off. I would like to see something effect them all equally but nothing to do with heat. Im already sink of dealing with clan heat on my mechs. Maybe they need to slow down even more when they drop one of the sides. I still think they're a little to powerful after 1/3 of the mech is blown away.

1 ton target computer is a little to op. You basically get Is quirks for the cost of 1 ton.

oh yea, I keep forgetting some of the sweet bonuses for clan mechs that we get.

But losing a side torso is a B, when it happens you might as well be dead, because your are going to be so heat inefficient that you better have ballistics left over.

maybe its the nature of the Clan mechs in general. This time period is just a good spot for them

[50 50]

Have to admit I hadn't really thought about just rolling in a full assault wave in the quick play scenarios but that is naturally an option and something we haven't been able to do outside of private matches. The limitation on team tonnage doesn't apply in faction play.

It's exciting to see that there has been a significant change to the setup of Faction Play but we need to remember the initial goals.
1. Make it easier/quicker to get matches so we are not waiting around so much.
2. Do it quickly. 2 months was a pretty good turn around and there's been a fair bit done.

It was not going to address other problems with the mode and it's obvious there is a lot more to be done.
Personally the next step needs to be a doozy and I've got my ideas. Not going to bother writing them up here though.


So... to make a suggestion, or perhaps call it the Clan Batchall Challenge.
We don't have the option to take less mechs, but we can make the choice to take less than maximum tonnage.

[MischiefSC]

BLOOD WOLF, on 13 December 2016 - 11:32 PM, said:

I am not conflating anything, and stop asserting that I am. I am asking a question that is a fact of the matter, That IS do win matches. The IS didn't win one match and just lost the rest.

So the question is once again is why does any IS team win any match? Accounting for extremes such as pug stomping, when you look at the Planet New OSLO between Bears and Ras, the Ras won a good number. Some of those were Unit vs Unit, and not Unit vs PUGS. So how did the IS win?

That is the question that is being avoided.

No, it's not avoided. What's being pointed out is unit vs pug is almost universally one sided and there are way, way more pugs on the IS side and more units on the Clans. Tech balance is a very minor factor is matches between comparable teams but it does motivate more teams to go Clan more often.

The list of reasons why has been brought up repeatedly. If Clans win 80% of the time then the IS still wins 20%, that means that the IS doesn't lose 100% of matches - nobody has ever said they did. However 80/20 is a huge disparity and is not balanced.

So, yet again - The issue is Unit vs Pug population disparity and the reasons for that disparity. Tech difference is a tiny slice of it.

[Lehmund]

MischiefSC, on 13 December 2016 - 05:58 PM, said:

Look, it's not OP Clan tech doing this. It's a population issue. The tech advantage for Clans is very thin right now - speed synergy and the like helps and it's a bit easier to build a good Clan deck (if more expensive) but tech balance isn't too far off.

However units all went Clan because IS suicide pugs are terrible and relentless. They'll show up to lose 30 matches in a row, refusing to play with the team or change to better builds. Playing in IS is like playing with a lode stone around your neck and as such most units went Clan.

Now with the influx of QP casual pugs it's like tossing puppies into traffic. Nobody wants to play on the side that's clearly going to lose overall.

I think this is more accurate. CGBI and other fairly strong Clan units have dismal records playing against stronger IS units on Boreal Vault in the past, sometimes losing 25-48. The long range advantage is there sure, but it isn't that significant.

The difference is skill level and using terrain. Heck, against more competent units, I've seen us get beaten in the long range poke as well. Depends on the skill of the pilots and coordination.

Now, if you take the same population from Phase 3 and drop it into Phase 4.1 (which is what happened organically), for sure the skill and population was lopsided....

Before making judgments and assumptions on whether it is an IS vs Clan direct tech imbalance causing this, or not, I'd give it a couple weeks, let the mercs choose sides and settle, and see how fights go with the IS dropdecks being buffed to 265 tons as per the Dec 14th patch......

[Pyorre]

Lehmund, on 14 December 2016 - 03:31 AM, said:

Now, if you take the same population from Phase 3 and drop it into Phase 4.1 (which is what happened organically), for sure the skill and population was lopsided....

Before making judgments and assumptions on whether it is an IS vs Clan direct tech imbalance causing this, or not, I'd give it a couple weeks, let the mercs choose sides and settle, and see how fights go with the IS dropdecks being buffed to 265 tons as per the Dec 14th patch......

My personal opinion is that this is where PGI dropped the ball quite big time by not RESETTING THE FACTIONS, If the reset had happened, maybe some Units would have switched over to IS side to see if anything was different, I know it happened when Phase 3 hit.

Now it's the same units that where stomping IS in Phase 3, keep on rolling over IS in Phase 4.1 and the only thing that changed was the vistas where the the meatgrinding of IS drops is happening.

[nehebkau]

BLOOD WOLF, on 13 December 2016 - 11:21 PM, said:

I did average 1.5k damage when I wad dropping, and we had people doing near 3k. I see a valid argument to be made against that.

When you say balance, what exactly do you mean? make clan meds do the dame damage as IS

And once again inflating by the "I've seen this once so it must happen a lot." Is this the basis of your whole world view? If thats the case then look! All around the world squirrels are riding birds in preparation for a takeover of the world!



I for one welcome our new bird-riding-squirrel overlords -- because as bloodwolf has demonstrated "If it happens once it happens all the time"

BLOOD WOLF, on 13 December 2016 - 11:05 PM, said:

Not gonna address you anymore nehe. I am clearly addressing you but if you want to keep stating that I am not when I am, go back and actually read my post.
I don't have time for strawmans tonight.
What players need to do is start evaluating what they need to do in a match to win it.
clan units lose their matches as well, and if you can beat it, then you can beat it more than it beats you.
Stop crying and get better.

BLOOD WOLF, on 13 December 2016 - 11:32 PM, said:

. Some of those were Unit vs Unit, and not Unit vs PUGS. So how did the IS win?
That is the question that is being avoided.

No, we are not avoiding it you just refuse to listen because you are living in your own world of logical fallacies. I like you you put forward the whole straw-man fallacy as a way to strengthen your position so, lets detail your list of logical crimes – shall we?

• Straw man fallacy: You misrepresent other arguments and fail to answer them.
  
• Tu quoque fallacy: when we claim you are not looking at things logically you claim that we are not being logical and committing a straw man fallacy
  
• Anecdotal fallacy: You use your personal experience to put forward a claim without providing actual verifiable data (statistically valid) and use that to invalidate the statistics pulled out of the game. “I have seen IS win unit on unit”
  
• “The Cherry-picked” data fallacy: You pick a single incident that supports your case (i.e a game where IS pugs have a match that is well outside of normal and put that forward as normal. “All IS players can do 3500 damage per game and get 12 kills – that’s normal”
  
• The “Loaded Question” fallacy: Your question above is a good example of asking a loaded question, one must respond with “yes IS can win unit vs unit” which is intended to make your position stronger.
  
• Burden of Proof fallacy: You make a claim “IS can win Unit vs Unit consistently” yet provide no proof of that happening then require that individuals who refute your claim provide evidence to the contrary. One can not make a claim as fact without evidence.

I am sure we could find more but I find you exhausting.

To answer your question, sometimes IS units are better than clan Units. Sometimes one unit has a good game, sometimes another unit has a bad game. These combine to make the statistical anomalies that you so stringently cling to. In much the same way that a ball, in roulette can land on the same number several times in a row an IS unit can win against a clan unit several times in a row. There are so many mitigating factors (many of which are luck) the one MUST look at a large sample size to get a true gauge of the actual state of affairs. In CW people are looking a the the sum-total of all the FW matches to provide a representation of what is happening – i.e. using a large statistical sample. Now I am just waiting for your next attack on me where you point out that I am committing logical fallacies and compound your tu quoque and argument from fallacy failures – but hey its what we have come to expect.

Edited by nehebkau, 14 December 2016 - 12:36 PM.

[Natural Predator]

I mean 265 IS side. 3 warhammers and a griffin? 1 grasshopper 2 warhammers and a shadow hawk? The possibilities are nasty.

[Positive Mental Attitude]

Ragnar Baron Leiningen, on 14 December 2016 - 10:02 AM, said:

I mean 265 IS side. 3 warhammers and a griffin? 1 grasshopper 2 warhammers and a shadow hawk? The possibilities are nasty.

cannot wait to get back over there honestly...

[MischiefSC]

If you're in a 12man, great.

If not, we'll that guy with 2 LRM commandos the LRM King Crab and Atlas (both with MGS to support his LRMS up close!) Will suck the excitement right out of it for you.

[Evil Goof]

Full disclosure: The OP is my unit's leader.

Today (under my main account) we fought under IS contract. In the new itteration of FW on my own with pugs I went 4-1 on quick play maps which I didn't find particularly fun (even while winning) and I gave up to wait until more of my unit was on. When they started logging in we went 8-3 in the drops I was in. One of our wins we were only five and had some terrible pugs so by second wave we switched to objectives to 'win', which we pulled off (can only speak for myself in that it feels hollow to win this way especially when the planet is already a lost cause). One of our losses was to a team that didn't try and fight first and went straight objectives. (Talking about Invasion Mode of course)

Quick play mode for IS we felt and noticed where the Clans have the advantage is their speed which aids them in reinforcing. We lost on frozen city after being up quite a few mechs because we were too far from our drop zone and when we figured it out it was too late. The next one on Terrible Therma we brought the fight to us and when we did get the lead we retreated back behind the walls to force the enemy to have to come through choke points to get us and this made every single kill more significant due to the enemies spawn now being on the complete other side of the map. It worked brilliantly and as expected.

My observations from this? Well like I have said these maps were not designed for FW and they are going to be poorly adapted unless some sort of objectives or reason/win conditions get people out to fight (especially on Skirmish and Assault). Pugs are impatient so it won't matter, however organised teams have nothing to gain from venturing too far from their drop zone unless they are confident they will be able to run over the other team and get back enough so reinforcement don't crush who's left to maintain the lead. I can see a lot of crappy and boring gameplay resulting from this. At least with the objectives on Domination and Conquest this won't be an issue.

The other issue seems to be the sheer numbers dropping for the Clan side. The planet was flipped in less than an hour for the Clans and the number of IS wins is grim. Clan side was still talking about seeing 10 minute wait times and IS all drops are instant. Before any talk should happen about mech balance, population balance should be addressed first and foremost.

Since the quick play matchmaker is involved now, please PGI turn on the tier system as a start. The other thing that needs to be addressed is pugs versus premades. The queue needs separating. Even if this means that groups will have to wait longer or not be able to make all those cbills seal clubbing. Of coarse groups that aren't full twelves still need randoms so this mechanic should be an option in looking for group. This would also let groups see which pugs are available.

This allows casuals pugs to play against casual pugs and not feel locked out of game play. It could also balance out the battles as players with similar skill face off. It could also work if it was open so if you are in a unit but want to pug you can by not being part of a group and entering qp mode where tier system would try and match you up. I think that was the main hindrance behind why the last time they tried to implement this it failed.

[MischiefSC]

This is all 100% true.

While I objected to this sort of split before with the complete embrace of failure to make a complex and engaging CW we need to go ahead and just make it the QP with new maps/modes it is at heart.

The current system isn't sustainable and will end up with worse population issues than CW3 had.