211 replies to this topic

[627]

Well, why don't we just lower the tonnage for clans? Like 200 tons?

At least this can be done on the fly.

Maybe IS should go back to 250, too. Or we'll have all the whine because the cheetahs killed the fatties.

[MischiefSC]

Ghogiel, on 14 December 2016 - 07:19 PM, said:

Firstly there is a new clan mech, so unit leaders pick clan so their members can use the new shinies.


People around here actually want CW to be about large rofl stomp groups farming pugs or even larger spam gen rush units that tag planets. Under the guise of "we brought leet unit/ more numbers, CW is about competitive, gid gud, having bigs units is healthly for the game"
Which just sounds good, then you realise it's at the expense of 90% of the playerbase.

When FW had factions I was strongly against a pug/premade split.

That's gone now though. There are no factions. It's just QP with a split for IS/Clan mechs and some new maps/modes. There's some sort of irrelevant voting interface for giggles that nobody cares about.

Split it. Pug/premade, use a MM. You'll get a ton more total players, better populating the gamemodes. FW died, unfortunate that PGI was unable to make a game involving real factions, depth, complexity or any of the mechanics to make that work but that's not the biggest disappointment PGI has ever pulled off, time to shoot and bury that one.

Finish what was started, split pug/premade, use a MM.

[-morituri-]

Cabusha3, on 14 December 2016 - 06:45 PM, said:

Yup, the top tier players DON'T want to fight each other. They prefer to farm pugs, so they all join the same side. They've been doing this for all of faction warfare.

Not much more to say really.

Well, isnt that disgusting...

[Ssamout]

Karl Streiger, on 14 December 2016 - 10:58 PM, said:

Maybe Clans should need to loose on incentive?
Play with your worst mechs try to find a challenge rather than stomping - sound strange for you?
It's not, a easy victory comes never easy without challenge it leaves a bad taste - so when your foe doesn't improve you have to increase the difficulty for you by making it harder for you

So you mean, because some bugger shoots his team in the leg by bringing batshit bad builds, and tries to kill mountains/buildings with lrms, the answer is to build even more idiotic mechs to balance that out? Yeah, sounds real fun.

What happens is that when you gimp your team expecting a bag of skittles, you then get a proper match ie decent opposition, and lose badly because you gimped your team. IF you'd picked a decent deck, the match could have been a real nailbiter, but because 'fun mechs' the match itself isn't funny at all.

Also, more tonnage to IS doesnt help because fatter seals give more bountiful harvest, or when a decent unit gets to drop with 85/85/70/25 or 85/85/50/45 decks or even fatter, and the other side stays with 250t thats gonna be a really onesided stomp.

Edited by Ssamout, 15 December 2016 - 12:29 AM.

[MechaBattler]

Light Fusion Engines. With a slight buff to HP to compensate for it still being crappier. Same of the other engines. That would be a good start.

[Marius Romanis]

Monkey Lover, on 14 December 2016 - 06:23 PM, said:

There is no way to fix a 1 bucket system.

Basically remove the patch and start over with what everyone asked them to do for the last year.

Which was what ????

chucklesMuch, on 14 December 2016 - 07:04 PM, said:

Does the favour of the monthly mech effect merc contracts selection?

Yes it has hugely effected the number of large groups that went clan.

I_AM_ZUUL, on 14 December 2016 - 07:07 PM, said:

its surprisingly simple... get rid of the garbage FW maps. thats the sum total of what needs to be done

FW maps are closer matches than open plains QP matches where the clan mechs have a speed and XL engine lose a shoulder and live advantage

Karl Marlow, on 14 December 2016 - 07:16 PM, said:

I'm really fighting hard with myself not to do that. Generally speaking I strait up do better when I pilot clan mechs when compared to IS ones. My skill doesn't change. The tech does. The two main reasons I havnt gone clan in FW is I like Marik, which was removed, and I generally like how inner sphere mechs look over clan.

I'm just not seeing much reason to keep bashing my head against this particular wall aside from me just being a stubborn SOB.

What do you mean by "doing better" when you play clan ? more damage is not "doing better" Clan is supposed to have a higher damage done because of quirks.

Imperial X, on 14 December 2016 - 08:19 PM, said:

There is one simple thing that can be done. IS XL engines rework that works like clans with a bigger disadvantage if you lose a torso. Problem just about solved. IS is gimped because most people are completely incapable of playing the bad mechanic of IS XL engines.

I agree, IS XL Engines just getting a greater speed reduction when a shoulder is destroyed than clan mechs do would be better than mech being destroyed, and then quirks could be lowered to compensate.

Yeonne Greene, on 14 December 2016 - 10:51 PM, said:

This is a really shoddy solution and I feel bad for mentioning it, but why not take a page out of the Group Queue playbook?

The smaller the group you drop with in FW, the more tonnage you have to play with in your drop deck.

The issue, however, is that you can actually sync-drop in FW without grouping, so the system can be gamed. Might have to take more drastic measures by counting everybody with the same tag as part of a group regardless of whether or not they all entered from the same lobby.

Then groups will drop at same time without the same tag because the MC for planets is pitifull so you dont need same tag for any reason.


Give it a few weeks, the large units that went clan to play with their new toy will get bored with it and go IS for 2 reasons. IS pugglets will dry up and the new bonus tonnage will be great fun for stomping the Clan pugglets that came along for the free wins with the good players when they were clan and now the larger units are IS they will stop playing too.

And Evil will stay clan probably because their the 1 unit that likes fighting other units.

[Cptn Goodvibes Pig of Steel]

G'day,


Not saying that nothing can be done, but fully expect that not much will be done to solve the problems of FW, CW or whatever you wish to call it. There's been plenty of time to fix it, yet here we are, still speculating (or mastabating) over how it should be made functional. If the powers to be were not able to make it widely popular years ago, what makes you say that they'll do it now? Maybe discussion on this is now rather pointless?

Now to some, there may be a vested interest to preserve the seal farm, but to the great majority, there is no desire to go anywhere near the seal farm. Whilst some of the buckets, details or other things of FW / CW may have changed over the years, its still essentially, "that the seal farm is still the seal farm" and no solo pug in his/her right mind will willingly enter the farm without massive inducement. And whether, we like it or not, by rhyme or reason, the vast majority play MWO as solo pugs.

Also consider that if we are lucky to get any meaningful change it is likely be glacially slow and with the usual non-communication over the PGI forum. So maybe its just time to forget about FW, stick to the solo queue. Enjoy it for what it is and await the fabled MW5. For myself, most of my unit saw the writing on the wall when CW was first released. Departed long ago, disappointed, saw the pace of PGI game development and knew there wouldn't be drastic changes back then. At least we have HBS next year. I'll give that a go.


Regards,
Vibes

[Karl Marlow]

CadoAzazel, on 15 December 2016 - 12:42 AM, said:

What do you mean by "doing better" when you play clan ? more damage is not "doing better" Clan is supposed to have a higher damage done because of quirks.

.

I mean doing better as doing better in every phase. Response, tankness, team contribution, and yeah just general lethality.

[Dogstar]

I and many others can think of any number of ways to fix the balance problem between clan and IS mechs. There are a ton of options.

But none of it can ever get implemented because there's too many people here who want to ensure that clan mechs remain better regardless of the cost to the game.

TL;DR - clan fan boys wont play fair

[radiv]

I love butthurtisforumwarrior. So many threads so much salt, and so little constructive posts

[Lily from animove]

Dogstar, on 15 December 2016 - 01:19 AM, said:

I and many others can think of any number of ways to fix the balance problem between clan and IS mechs. There are a ton of options.

But none of it can ever get implemented because there's too many people here who want to ensure that clan mechs remain better regardless of the cost to the game.

TL;DR - clan fan boys wont play fair

and what do you want to "balance" until FW turns out even? what do you think will happen when the clanplayers shift to IS? there is a big part of the imbalnce due to the skill differences between IS and clan. if you balance emchs to cover this, and people with skill shift to the IS the entire system instantly breakes more than ever.

Karl Streiger, on 14 December 2016 - 10:58 PM, said:

Well did somebody mentioned that a ton of potential is Players bought their farm during the greatest of all phase 3?
Do you think they have even read the patchnotes?
Even if they might come back play one game doesn't matter if their team was worse loose and never look back.

Maybe Clans should need to loose on incentive?
Play with your worst mechs try to find a challenge rather than stomping - sound strange for you?
It's not, a easy victory comes never easy without challenge it leaves a bad taste - so when your foe doesn't improve you have to increase the difficulty for you by making it harder for you

no, thats the internet, epeen matters, what does not matter is the cheese to reach it, and victory doens't have a bad taste ever. So interne tis the place where people are proud of stealing candy form babies or racing vs disabled without legs.

The issue is youc nanot get "low" by intention as that means when you meet a proper is group you basically gimp yourself, while those newbie Is gamers truly get trashed. The imbalance is real and the game needs a better way for people knowing MWO to teach those not knowing it.

A first thing would be making private lobbies free for all. A stupid concept requiring premium for at least 2 people.

Edited by Lily from animove, 15 December 2016 - 02:19 AM.

[Tristan Winter]

It would be interesting to know how many people attribute the problems to IS vs Clans imbalance and how many people attribute it to other, coincidental factors (many good units just happen to be Clan units, etc)

Lyoto Machida, on 14 December 2016 - 06:43 PM, said:

Well, the website IS called mwoMERCS.com for a reason...

I really don't think it is.

radiv, on 15 December 2016 - 01:52 AM, said:

I love butthurtisforumwarrior. So many threads so much salt, and so little constructive posts

Yeah, it's weird that people aren't trying to be constructive anymore. It's almost as if they don't believe that PGI is reading the constructive posts. Anyway, let's talk about something else. Anyone know when the next FP Roundtable is being arranged? Apparently, the Bucket Roundtable was just the first of several.

Heh.

[Kcanni]

All i can say is that what i seen is that a merc unit was favoring the jade falcon in te past because they had less bad pugs to fil up the groups for he better units, that is a big reason why top units make their choices, the imbalance doesnt have much to do with wich mech is used, but more what player uses it. I don't think much can be done about it since its hard to choose for the side that gives you players in your group that will not perform good enough to your standards, the jade falcon loyalists have been more used to play with the better units and have made a good blend. IS side has good players to ofcource but generally have had less time to learn from the top units and therefor feel like a worse pick to join with. Also showing up wit the new clanmech makes a good reason to play clanside at this moment.
Units pick what their players feel like playing at that moment and what wil benefit their games best, they dont realy care about bonuses or anything as those rewards is just a very smal part of the pay and no part of the fun.

It is a normal behavour to pick the side that you benefit from the most in the way of fun playing.

What i thought about long time ago to balance clans vs IS is to make the maps run hotter the deeper the clans move into ?IS space, and colder the more IS moves into clanspace, problem is that there isnt much clanspace to move into in the start of he map..so that part might be hard.

Just remember last reset of the map lot of good units joined FRR and FRR skyrocketed, but then lots went to clans and stayed there more then on IS side so the clans overtook the world again.. key is more lure for the better units to join the loosing side
Like bring out a IS mech that dominates next time, it will pull most good players (those also often buy packs) to that side..
Problem then is that clan side ill be having a bad time and stop playing. Other thing is you can change the tonnage on the side that get a new mech to try and balance it a bit, maybe even upto a huge difference, like now the marauders does realy good at 85 tonnage, reduce tonnage so max 2 can be used together with mediums/ lights, so 230 tonnage max would be a better balance for this month.
So instead of increasing i suggest for this month its better to reduce, and that will also make more room for ppl to be forced into medium / light mechs, wich will give different playstyle for this month on clan side.

But my worst fear i that it will never realy get balanced, since atm. only a few units make the difference. And pugs dont stand any chance against them, thats just life..

Gz Canni

Edited by Blackcanni, 15 December 2016 - 02:53 AM.

[Bud Crue]

The problem is not "overall" imbalance. The problem is one of outliers.

To answer the thread title:

The easiest way: Get rid of or substantively nerf the performance of the Kodiak, particularly the Kodiak 3, and the Arctic Cheetah. The IS has no answer to either, particularly the former. The closest mechs the IS has to their Clan counters is the Mauler and the Firestarter. One is so slow that it will be destroyed as soon as it is out of cover, and even with as small an engine as is practicable it still cannot mount equivalent firepower in terms of damage potential or hard point height; the other is visually twice the size of its counter part and may as well be moving in slow motion, it is that much easier to hit. Don't believe me. Go into a private match and test it. At least the IS now has a Spider that comes a bit closer to the Cheetah in performance and maneuverability but still a very different mech (buffed MGs are NOT equivalent to cspl).

I for one am sick of this debate, and this weekend will play CW for as long as I can stomach it. The fact that PGI and some players refuse to see this obvious, data driven, there is nothing subjective about this, REALITY not withstanding; I will play. Alas, new players and anyone with even a hint of ability at making comparative analysis can see it too, and thus they are not playing because of it Well, no shi7.

[Ssamout]

Blackcanni, on 15 December 2016 - 02:47 AM, said:

All i can say is that what i seen is that a merc unit was favoring the jade falcon in te past because they had less bad pugs to fil up the groups for he better units, that is a big reason why top units make their choices, the imbalance doesnt have much to do with wich mech is used, but more what player uses it. I don't think much can be done about it since its hard to choose for the side that gives you players in your group that will not perform good enough to your standards, the jade falcon loyalists have been more used to play with the better units and have made a good blend. IS side has good players to ofcource but generally have had less time to learn from the top units and therefor feel like a worse pick to join with. Also showing up wit the new clanmech makes a good reason to play clanside at this moment.
Units pick what their players feel like playing at that moment and what wil benefit their games best, they dont realy care about bonuses or anything as those rewards is just a very smal part of the pay and no part of the fun.

It is a normal behavour to pick the side that you benefit from the most in the way of fun playing.

Yes, this has been the main motivator in my picks as to where our unit is going next. I've played cw/fw/fp/.. since it came out, and a lot of those drops have been as a solo player. That's why I like to choose a side where I know are decent players that drop regularly, contract bonuses or **** like that doesnt matter at all. I really dont care what mechs people are bringing, as long as I know that even if they took lrmboats they will push with you, they will move with you, they will shoot the same target - even if no one speaks a word. They know the dynamic of battle and can react without someone holding their hand or giving instructions all the time.. ie REGROUP you ducks.

[Lily from animove]

Bud Crue, on 15 December 2016 - 03:03 AM, said:

The problem is not "overall" imbalance. The problem is one of outliers.

To answer the thread title:

The easiest way: Get rid of or substantively nerf the performance of the Kodiak, particularly the Kodiak 3, and the Arctic Cheetah. The IS has no answer to either, particularly the former. The closest mechs the IS has to their Clan counters is the Mauler and the Firestarter. One is so slow that it will be destroyed as soon as it is out of cover, and even with as small an engine as is practicable it still cannot mount equivalent firepower in terms of damage potential or hard point height; the other is visually twice the size of its counter part and may as well be moving in slow motion, it is that much easier to hit. Don't believe me. Go into a private match and test it. At least the IS now has a Spider that comes a bit closer to the Cheetah in performance and maneuverability but still a very different mech (buffed MGs are NOT equivalent to cspl).

I for one am sick of this debate, and this weekend will play CW for as long as I can stomach it. The fact that PGI and some players refuse to see this obvious, data driven, there is nothing subjective about this, REALITY not withstanding; I will play. Alas, new players and anyone with even a hint of ability at making comparative analysis can see it too, and thus they are not playing because of it Well, no shi7.

this "solution" still implies everyone or the majority fields kodiaks. that isn't even true. our game syesterday hat a lot more marauders sicn epeople level them currently. I hardly saw a kodiak.

Edited by Lily from animove, 15 December 2016 - 04:10 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Lily from animove, on 15 December 2016 - 04:03 AM, said:

this "solution" still implies everoyne or the majority fields kodiaks. that isn't even true. our game syesterday hat a lot more marauders sicn epeople level them currently. I hardly saw a kodiak.

That is correct. Marauders are not the problem. The question was "what can be done to keep the IS playing" CW. My answer is to address those mechs that are causing the primary imbalance, and in my opinion those mechs are the Kodiak(3) and the AC. Sure the Clans have other good and even disproportionately good mechs, but those other mechs (NG, HB-IIc, maybe the Mad-IIc, etc.) are not causing the IS avoidance.

Edited by Bud Crue, 15 December 2016 - 04:12 AM.

[Hoshi Toranaga]

I think the imbalance is pretty good balanced with tonnage changes. Yes you can argue that maybe 265 is not enough or Clan could be lowered, but tech wise with quirks I think this can easily be tweaked until right.

The much more pressing issue is distrubution of loyalists and mercs.

The only way to treat this is INCENTIVES and market values.

If a faction les say Jade has already 10 mercs units contracted then those incentives go down and down until you have to pay to still get in... (which would be stupid but the system has to facilitate taxation of it).
On the other hand you get huge benefits/incentives as a merc if you join a faction that has a low merc contract count or even ZERO.

Same goes for layalists but with an added time component: If you are loyal to one faction and win CW engagements your units rank goes up and you gain incentives. When you change faction you start over at ZERO.

Even the incentive system could be quite simple in terms of C-Bill and or XP boosts when winning for your faction/contract. If you are a merc in a overpopulated faction you get -50% payouts for each match, if you are on a low merc count faction you start out at +5% and can work your way up. While mercs are topped at -50% to +15% a loyalist can go up to "premium time" level (of course add your premium bonus if you have premium time on top). That could mean pretty awesome payouts compared to QP.

Of course those numbers are from the top of my head and you would need to calculate the real incentives really hard to keep players paying for premium time etc. to keep the game going. But you get the idea.

You could even add additional money sinks (as some old players and units have too much cash anyways) to buy additional stuff to help you (more defense turrets or whatever...)

[Lily from animove]

Bud Crue, on 15 December 2016 - 04:11 AM, said:

That is correct. Marauders are not the problem. The question was "what can be done to keep the IS playing" CW. My answer is to address those mechs that are causing the primary imbalance, and in my opinion those mechs are the Kodiak(3) and the AC. Sure the Clans have other good and even disproportionately good mechs, but those other mechs (NG, HB-IIc, maybe the Mad-IIc, etc.) are not causing the IS avoidance.

buit thes emechs aren't the primary imbalance, they are only the imbalance if a group goes hardmode. the imbalance happens already in the non hardcore grps vs non ahrdcore grps. I ahve been on both sides with my accounts and I can tell you the main issue is the attitude of the IS players and their higher amount of bottom skill players. Nerfing the KDK will just have a small placebo effect and soon they find a new excuse whats OP about clans.

I dunno how to fix it, maybe fixing PSR and only allowing T2 in FW. that would at leats be an interetsing experiment for a short while, as it weeds out the bottom derp. Playing with the IS showed me so many basic problems that often half the teams players have that it is near impossible for some good players to guide or even carry them.

The KDK is the scapegoat excuse and deletign ti will make them just find another. before the KDK we had a similar QQ form the IS, so why do you think woul it stop by basically just taking the KDK out again?

Edited by Lily from animove, 15 December 2016 - 04:37 AM.

[TWIAFU]

Monkey Lover, on 14 December 2016 - 10:04 PM, said:

Seeing one of the biggest merc groups got caught using alt account in cw already i dont think this would last very long

Get rid of mercs.

No point to them in one bucket. It is IS vs Clan, not IS vs Clan and Merc.