211 replies to this topic

[Bud Crue]

Lily from animove, on 15 December 2016 - 09:15 AM, said:

So the mechs that currently aren't used keep the IS out of FW? now THAT is amazing logic.

Not really. If one side has the best and you have less then the best, you are not actively being encouraged to play on an equal footing. The fact that at the moment the other side is not always bringing "the best" does not change that perception of inequality.

[Novakaine]

IS pilots stop playing FW.
Let the Clan trolls Spock thier way out of that one.
Yeah some amazing logic ya got there also.

[Lily from animove]

Bud Crue, on 15 December 2016 - 09:22 AM, said:

Not really. If one side has the best and you have less then the best, you are not actively being encouraged to play on an equal footing. The fact that at the moment the other side is not always bringing "the best" does not change that perception of inequality.

When the claim is that the cause for losing is the best, and the bets isn't used, then the reason for losing cannot be that best. So why does the IS currently fail if hardly any KDK's and ACH's are used? Yes it may be the reason they don't come to the battles, but those "best" not being used cannot be the reason for them to lose as much as they do.

What even happens with that logic if the clanners still have the best and PGI makes changes that IS suddenly wins 70% will Is still ask for nerfs/buffs because the clans still have the best.
The majority of people can't even use the potential of the best and they fail in simple taqsks where even the worst can beat them. And as long as people do use the "best" as a scapegoat for their bad performance we never solve the issue. They need to realise first they are even losing against the "worst".

[Bud Crue]

Lily from animove, on 15 December 2016 - 09:31 AM, said:

When the claim is that the cause for losing is the best, and the bets isn't used, then the reason for losing cannot be that best. So why does the IS currently fail if hardly any KDK's and ACH's are used? Yes it may be the reason they don't come to the battles, but those "best" not being used cannot be the reason for them to lose as much as they do.

What even happens with that logic if the clanners still have the best and PGI makes changes that IS suddenly wins 70% will Is still ask for nerfs/buffs because the clans still have the best.
The majority of people can't even use the potential of the best and they fail in simple taqsks where even the worst can beat them. And as long as people do use the "best" as a scapegoat for their bad performance we never solve the issue. They need to realise first they are even losing against the "worst".

"the claim is that the cause for losing..."

That is a different issue. And one which involves population, overall game balance, modes, maps, and the kind of folks attracted to each side, relative skill AND mech balance.

The question that I was discussing is that of the thread: "What can be done to keep the IS playing FW?"
I maintain my answers above apply to THAT question.

As to your assertion that the IS folks will still want nerfs to clanners even if all of a sudden the IS was winning 70% of matches...ok. There are always people who always want more. Just like there are still clanners complaining about OP thunderbolts (I mean seriously?). Undoubtedly there are always nuts.

Edited by Bud Crue, 15 December 2016 - 09:41 AM.

[BoldricKent]

While most of the tread is about balancing IS/Clan tech. In an organized play the abiltiy
to move with union is one of key factors. Clan Omni might have lock engines, but in FW thats
an advantage, moving whole force with similar speed , fast enough to redeploy and react.

IS have to compromise on speed/agility if it wants to hold on to Clans in armor and firepower
and since we have more chassis the disappearance between used mech in IS company tend to be bigger, taking more time to group up, press in..etc.

There ware quite few standardized deck attempts, but those require full dedicated teams. And the new MM/1 bucket thingy tries to address the problem of player base, by make it more accesable
to anyone.... therefore 12 man drops are falling down compered to diverse drops and so does the numbers of standardized/unit decks. Leading to less effective IS resistance towards Clans, tonnage difference should be much bigger to compensate for the above described weakness.

[Lily from animove]

TWIAFU, on 15 December 2016 - 04:42 AM, said:

Get rid of mercs.

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

Well that woudl still and simply make the side OP where the former mercs goup up. Actually with proper incentive the mercs could be the balancing factor. between the factions. But this would require some VERY restructed merc rules, like merc units amax of 20 members, and never more than 4 mercs per battle to avoid them from sync dropping. They are mercs they should not make whole drops alone.

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.

That would require a wide range of changes. mostly about heat rescaling, a major factor of the current imbalance is the hardpoint inflation on many clanmechs paired with the inflatory RoF and heatscale. it makes the clanmechs also perform in a way the most IS mechs can't because they don't have the hardpoints for a similar playstyle.

The issue is and stil stays the basic balance between chassis, and if a chassis is clan or IS is decided by the lore, not by the tech itself. But some very MWO specific deigns have a heavy impact on the chassis balance. think about mlx, its bad because the way how WO works. no ST hardpoints, nnot enough ahrdpoints and weight to properly boat stuff. with less alphas around the few hardpoints would be less of an issue as mechs buildaround excessive guns would peak out their potential much quicker.

[Bud Crue]

Lily from animove, on 15 December 2016 - 10:03 AM, said:

That would require a wide range of changes. mostly about heat rescaling, a major factor of the current imbalance is the hardpoint inflation on many clanmechs paired with the inflatory RoF and heatscale. it makes the clanmechs also perform in a way the most IS mechs can't because they don't have the hardpoints for a similar playstyle.

The issue is and stil stays the basic balance between chassis, and if a chassis is clan or IS is decided by the lore, not by the tech itself. But some very MWO specific deigns have a heavy impact on the chassis balance. think about mlx, its bad because the way how WO works. no ST hardpoints, nnot enough ahrdpoints and weight to properly boat stuff. with less alphas around the few hardpoints would be less of an issue as mechs buildaround excessive guns would peak out their potential much quicker.

Yep. And that is a tough problem to crack. But it is still the problem as I see it as well.

From a mech level, not just an assault, but overall design of mechs as put forth in this game, the Kodiak-3 and maybe the SB are nearly perfect in my eyes. But so too is the ACH (mobility and visible profile being of note), and the Hunchback IIC (hard point location being especially good).

How to bring them down to mortal levels without negative quirks or remaking them as something else? I have no idea.

Nonetheless as long as they have no equivalent on the IS side, folks on the IS side are going to feel like they are fighting an uphill battle. And in a supposedly competitive environment where all mechs are supposed to be of equivalent value regardless of their role (according to the devs)...that's a problem, regardless of why or how it came to occur. If PGI doesn't figure something out to address it, then I believe this mode is well and truly fu...ed.

[sycocys]

A lot of the tech vs tech and clan vs pug could be solved with adaptive objectives to alter the difficulty for one side or the other.

Tech vs tech especially if they are somehow giving each mech/build a battle value rating and the clan/team vs pug is pretty straight forward to start setting the curve on. (Also consider the psr/elo ratings)

Nothing really needs to be 1:1 if they would actually build the game out with some depth so they could add scaling challenge based on a variety of factors like I mentioned above. Let it be 12 vs pugs with the 12 having fully rigged machines - then add in layers of objectives with more difficulty/objectives to need to win to secure the match the larger the difference and force them to split up to accomplish enough for victory in the time limit - with an easier set/threshold for the team at the disadvantage.

Then you have an actual way to set some measures of balance no matter who matches up against who, and as ridiculous at it would be to think of - have developed some replay value into the game.

Edited by sycocys, 15 December 2016 - 10:45 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

You hardly can't change it with numbers - the lore Clan tech stuff weight is already to low.
Maybe you can tweak rate of fire and toughness of the equipment - but given the Window of engagement - alpha warrior and generally low reload times 5-6 sec instead of 4 sec reload doesn't change the game, even when the numbers look great in a spreadsheet.

Outside regulating like repair and shortage of spare parts don't work either. Only thing that might work bv based mm resulting in matches that are only fought with best equipment on both sides

Alternative might activation tickets cost call them honor or prestige - you start with a predefined number of tickets - completing mission objectives grant tickets and you can buy the second drop - when your team / you run out of tickets you can't drop again resulting in sudden death.
Combined with respawn and Battlevalue this could work if people understand the mechanic.
Prepare 4 cheap gimp mechs but have them almost guaranteed available or run the best mechs and it might happen that you only have you initial drop

[JediPanther]

Until they remove the possibility of spawn camping the drop ships I won't play fw even if you got paid 60k c-bills and 3 mc just for entering the queue. Nothing is worse than being down a wave of mechs then have the enemy just sit and lazily pew pew all your team before they even touch the ground. It's boring as hell for them and just pisses off the side getting spawn camped. Who the hell wants to play a game where you don't even have a chance of shooting back?

At least in this example my old unit gave the enemy a fair chance and even let the last enemy mech have an honorable 1 vs 1. Would he have beaten us? No he was far too out guned and outnumbered. Did he have an even chance of winning that 1 vs 1? Yes he did.We didn't farm him off the drop ship.

[BoldricKent]

Take a Trial Ebon, it has (2lpl, 1med, 1Gauss with 3 tons, Targeting comp 1, 14dhs, 41 % heat, 48 alpha,364 armor, 87 speed)
Catapult K2 can mimic that build (2LPL, 1med, 1 Gauss with 4 tons(target comp weight/crit add), 41 %heat,364 armor, 42 alpha
but needs only 10 DHS, and only 80,4 speed on 300xl engine). Both mech have crit space left (16 and 15), Catapult is without Ferro if we add that it can hold 305xl with 1 crit slot left, which would speed up to 81.7 tweek speed.

So identical armor,heat, weapon setup, tonnage will net about 8% less alpha and speed.
If we want to match Ebon in speed,armor and firepower (by adding 1MPL), we cant, simply on account of increasing firepower by 6, we need to increase chassis and number of heatsinks (for 3) and i havent found IS mech that can support all that while
have enough big engine to keep the speed.

So how do you counter that ? Forget XL, range advantage.
Just ability to carry payload with same agility.

[Trollfeed]

Remember that FW event that gave out assault mechs? They messed up rewards and accidentally gave wrong faction mechs so I got free executioner. It was first clan mech I played besides cheetah and it sat on my mechbay for a week or two before I took it for a spin.

Now I have 9 unique mastered clan chassis and can say that no way I'm touching FW on IS side unless there's some really sweet event rewards like mechs or mechbays with reasonable requirements for getting them. Fighting against other inner sphere factions was fun but against clans it felt like **** and now I know why.

Edited by Trollfeed, 15 December 2016 - 11:02 AM.

[SuperFunkTron]

I'm surprised that no one has yet suggested melee as an incentive to use IS in this thread. What was really one of the original extra abilities was the fact that at very close range, an IS mech could punch and kick its way to advantage! This would also require a fall down mechanic finally be implemented in the game, but imagine how the IS's shorter ranges would be complimented by their ability to attack the clans in a way they could not be attacked back. Even if we wanted to allow clan mechs to melee in cases where they had arms or fists built for it, those melees could come with a steep c-bill cost that reflects their gross aversion to that kind of combat.

No, this is not an immediate solution, but it is one that should start getting worked on as soon as possible. Further specializing the play styles of IS vs Clan would be great in encouraging not only different tactics and approaches to to the battle, but also add some potential balance with providing a "unique" ability to the side that seems to be in need of help!

Edited by SuperFunkTron, 15 December 2016 - 11:05 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

That requires

A.) Work

B.) Full engine caps available across the board for everything except lights.

[BoldricKent]

Mlee was suggested early one, but thx to CRY engine or PGI programing, it will never heppent. That was stated quite a few times.
I would be all for that.

[SuperFunkTron]

To be very constructive toward the original point of the topic, I am a clanner simply because I like those mechs better and always have. I'm sure there are certain advantages to clan mechs that are difficult to replicate or make comparable IS equivilants, but I have to say that there are 2 factors that I've noticed in my experience in FW since the update:

The first is that the the tactics I've seen employed are on the "green" side of experience and that team work wasn't being utilized. Single mechs pushing out one at a time into a group is really just a bad choice as opposed to them sending a matching number of mechs and rushing at once. These are mistakes that are universally bad and end in the same result on both sides of the tech divde. This this is more of an experience issue than mech balance issue.

The second factor is more visceral for me, and that is that the IS mechs of comparable size don't lack a sense of threat or intimidation. Even while piloting a Timber Wolf, I know that I cannot take a Black Knight lightly because he can destroy me just as quickly as I can destroy him. Same goes with lighter mechs such as an ice-ferret vs cicada. I'm not a new or bad player, but I know that any mech in the right hands is dangerous.

Now, a simple solution:

I think these 2 issues can probably be dealt with fairly well by implementing an FW specific tier system. Everyone should start at the bottom and fight their way up to the higher tiers just as we did previously. There will be a chaotic mess in the beginning as there is now, but knowing that the better players will start to match up with better enemies will give some relief as they are separated from the newer and less experienced players. Its the closest we've come to balancing quick play and I'd say that, with full consideration of the player base size, this is the best we can do to even the playing field with quick results.

Without getting into more complicated ideas to increase appeal to certain factions (such as my previous suggestions of making mechs availability more faction specific and adding melee combat/falling), this is the smallest change with the largest likely impact of all the suggestions posted so far. Capping merc contracts numbers and incentivizing play for factions that are clearly in need of aide are also great ideas that I believe would all work symbiotically toward improving the overall population and experience balance, but those will take a little trial and error as well as defining something that will be "incentive enough" to pull people to those ailing factions.

I really want FW to work and would really like to keep the IS wanting to fight off the clans. Rolling the other team is not much fun at all compared to a well balanced, brutal fight that forces you to choose adapt and adjust your tactics on the fly. I think an extra minute of waiting would be worthwhile to help better balance the FW matches so tiers can be more closely matched.

BoldricKent, on 15 December 2016 - 11:07 AM, said:

Mlee was suggested early one, but thx to CRY engine or PGI programing, it will never heppent. That was stated quite a few times.
I would be all for that.

We need to find out if it is still issue because of cry engine, or if it is just something that requires work. It really is a system that the IS needs to have available to help distinguish them from the mechs other than being technologically behind.

[WarHippy]

Bud Crue, on 15 December 2016 - 04:49 AM, said:

My apologies. When I responded above I called out the Kodiak-3. That is what I meant. Moreover, my "solution" is intended as merely "the easiest" solution I could think of. It isn't going to happen though.

wait...I just looked at what you quoted...I did call out the KDK-3 in that post. So now I am confused.

"Get rid of or substantively nerf the performance of the Kodiak, particularly the Kodiak 3"
That is the line he is talking about and why he said what he said. Yes, you called out the Kodiak 3, but you also ask for nerfs to the rest of them with additional focus on the Kodiak 3.

[LordNothing]

Davers, on 14 December 2016 - 07:41 PM, said:

It does not help matters when the Clans keep getting shiny new assault mechs and the IS is only getting a medium, ANOTHER 65 tonner, and possibly an undisclosed light mech- surely none of these are going to inspire fear on the battlefield.

im of the opinion that the bushie needs to be intentionally made op so the is can really compete. period. end of line. give each one 2 more hardpoints. i dont think its possible given its layout, but seriously, its supposed to be a clan buster, make it happen. clan gets op mech after op mech, but buy an is mech and get ripped off. also move the gh cap on medium lasers to 8.

Edited by LordNothing, 15 December 2016 - 12:11 PM.

[Bud Crue]

WarHippy, on 15 December 2016 - 12:06 PM, said:

"Get rid of or substantively nerf the performance of the Kodiak, particularly the Kodiak 3"
That is the line he is talking about and why he said what he said. Yes, you called out the Kodiak 3, but you also ask for nerfs to the rest of them with additional focus on the Kodiak 3.

Yes. I figured it out well after the fact, but didn't want to belabor it. FYI: The reason I phrased it that way is due to my belief that if the Kodiak-3 was eliminated, the SB or the 4 would replace it (I believe it is actually pretty close leader board stats wise), if the 3 suddenly disappeared. Meh. Doesn't matter. Thanks for clarifying the point though.

[Lightfoot]

Better question. How can you keep PUGs playing vs 12 mans? The mechs are balanced mostly. Both factions have good, bad, and ugly mechs. Inner Sphere get close to the best Heavy in the Marauder, and the best Light in the Locust. One Locust, 3 Marauders for your drop kit. You would definitely be a hard force to beat if you play it right.

Thing is the 12 man's do play it right and no mech is a match for two other mechs. Yes you could beat two at once with luck, but usually not. So what PUGs do is fight like a team of solo players rather than playing the wingman for their teammates. So it's not the mechs as much as the pilots.

I play both factions, I think I like the IS mechs best for their toughness, I can really stretch the armor/structure out for quite a bit longer than Clan mechs. Clan mechs are kind of burst damage but take damage fast.