125 replies to this topic

[1453 R]

So what's the solution?

I see so many threads like this, with p!ssed-off Sphere players kvetching constantly about how broken Clan technology is at all levels/in all/ways/on all maps&modes, calling any Clan player who comes in to try and debate any sort of point all manner of filthy names, and basically just circle-jerking on how much everything Clan is hateful and just needs to die.

So what's the fix?

I know what y'all want the fix to be, but I've said it before and I'll say it again - flipping imbalance is not eliminating imbalance. In threads where people are actually discussing solutions instead of just spewing bile, there's a lot of good discussion on things that could bring the two tech bases into competitive equilibrium without homogenizing them into Red/Green versions of the same damn thing, or doing the Johnny Z bit where the Clan tech base is gutted into worthless nonplayability in favor of level 1 Sphere tech on Thunderbolts.

What's the fix? Do any of you have any idea what should be done? Or are you just here to vomit up hate and call the rest of us names?

Feel free to find one of the actual balance discussion threads and get in on those, if you have ideas worth contributing. Failing that? Clamp it. Senseless vitriol solves nothing.

[Mystere]

Johnny Z, on 19 December 2016 - 02:23 AM, said:

They have been rolling the map none stop for years.

Hmm. Have people conveniently forgotten the time when the Clans were reduced to a handful of planets?


In a related note, one of my crazy (or not so crazy -- you be the judge) solutions is to have tonnage dynamically increase/decrease once the front lines goes nearer/farther one's home and "major" planets. For the RP impaired, just imagine it as your supply lines getting affected by distance.

<weight changes should be within reasonable limits, of course>

Edited by Mystere, 19 December 2016 - 02:17 PM.

[NRP]

I brawl Clan mechs all the time in my Battlemaster and Cyclops 10-Q. I've also seen Banshees wreck Clan mechs in a brawl. In fact, I'm not sure which Clan mech I'd take to a brawl if I had to. I guess my Spirit Bear or Timberwolf? On the other hand, there are a bunch of IS mechs I'd choose. I think this issue is more complex and nuanced than purported.

[3xnihilo]

QuantumButler, on 18 December 2016 - 09:21 PM, said:

Just adapt and overcome bro!

Adapt=run clan mechs?

[Vonbach]

3xnihilo, on 19 December 2016 - 02:31 PM, said:

Adapt=run clan mechs?

Basically. Thats pretty much what happened in FW anyway.

Edited by Vonbach, 19 December 2016 - 02:33 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

NRP, on 19 December 2016 - 02:29 PM, said:

I brawl Clan mechs all the time in my Battlemaster and Cyclops 10-Q. I've also seen Banshees wreck Clan mechs in a brawl. In fact, I'm not sure which Clan mech I'd take to a brawl if I had to. I guess my Spirit Bear or Timberwolf? On the other hand, there are a bunch of IS mechs I'd choose. I think this issue is more complex and nuanced than purported.

Most players don't build their Clan 'Mechs for brawl; the range advantage is too flexible to ignore. Most resource - efficient IS weapons cap out just outside brawl range, so you see it a lot more.

Plus, building for brawl makes you more dependent on your team not melting immediately, so ithere is another reason not to do it if you don't have to.

[Jackal Noble]

Mystere, on 19 December 2016 - 02:14 PM, said:

Hmm. Have people conveniently forgotten the time when the Clans were reduced to a handful of planets?


In a related note, one of my crazy (or not so crazy -- you be the judge) solutions is to have tonnage dynamically increase/decrease once the front lines goes nearer/farther one's home and &quot;major&quot; planets. For the RP impaired, just imagine it as your supply lines getting affected by distance.

&lt;weight changes should be within reasonable limits, of course&gt;

That might single handedly be your best post that I've ever read.

[Besh]

1453 R, on 19 December 2016 - 02:04 PM, said:

So what's the solution?

I see so many threads like this, with p!ssed-off Sphere players kvetching constantly about how broken Clan technology is at all levels/in all/ways/on all maps&modes, calling any Clan player who comes in to try and debate any sort of point all manner of filthy names, and basically just circle-jerking on how much everything Clan is hateful and just needs to die.

So what's the fix?

I know what y'all want the fix to be, but I've said it before and I'll say it again - flipping imbalance is not eliminating imbalance. In threads where people are actually discussing solutions instead of just spewing bile, there's a lot of good discussion on things that could bring the two tech bases into competitive equilibrium without homogenizing them into Red/Green versions of the same damn thing, or doing the Johnny Z bit where the Clan tech base is gutted into worthless nonplayability in favor of level 1 Sphere tech on Thunderbolts.

What's the fix? Do any of you have any idea what should be done? Or are you just here to vomit up hate and call the rest of us names?

Feel free to find one of the actual balance discussion threads and get in on those, if you have ideas worth contributing. Failing that? Clamp it. Senseless vitriol solves nothing.

A partial fix at least - and one the would not require any Dev intervention at all - would be if IS PUGs and small Groups would simply STOP being ultracool-silent-one-man-armies...and would TF start to try to comprehend Teamwork .

Use VOIP or TextChat, focus fire, do not play for your own Stats but in a way your Team can win...that kind of stuff .

Too many are simply not doing anything of it .

And THEN whine at the End of a Match about OP ClanTech. After not even TRYING a concerted effort to beat them .

Ofc does not make it any easier when 12 IS Pugs get matched up against full 12men Clan Groups....or an enemy Team made out of KCom, EVIL and 54MR Groups...

Edited by Besh, 19 December 2016 - 02:48 PM.

[Vonbach]

Just give IS XL engines that don't blow up when you lose a torso. That would go a long way
to balancing IS and Clan. If clanners don't like it oh well.

[Jackal Noble]

What we need to do is build a super computer to scan every single thread and post ever written and do a comparative analysis.
Follow it up with an algorithm that weighs the tonnage vs hardpoints available vs tech and level out any minor disparities.
Finish it all with making clan tech better.

There, problem solved.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Mystere, on 19 December 2016 - 02:14 PM, said:

Hmm. Have people conveniently forgotten the time when the Clans were reduced to a handful of planets?


In a related note, one of my crazy (or not so crazy -- you be the judge) solutions is to have tonnage dynamically increase/decrease once the front lines goes nearer/farther one's home and "major" planets. For the RP impaired, just imagine it as your supply lines getting affected by distance.

<weight changes should be within reasonable limits, of course>

This would certainly be easier than how Guild Wars had it setup, where the map that ABs were fought on were more lopsided the deeper into enemy territory you got, especially given the average map design of PGI maps.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 19 December 2016 - 02:50 PM.

[1453 R]

Vonbach, on 19 December 2016 - 02:47 PM, said:

Just give IS XL engines that don't blow up when you lose a torso. That would go a long way
to balancing IS and Clan. If clanners don't like it oh well.

That's a cheap solution. I get that it's an easy solution, but what would benefit the game more is if the Sphere XL had something to it that made Clan players sit there and go "Maaaaan, I wish our engines did that." What that solution is, I don't know. Figuring out a different-but-equal fix for the cXL is one of the most difficult balance problems on the forum, one a lot of people have tried to tackle without any solid successes I can think of.

Scarecrow made a superb point in one of those actual-discussion balance threads people in threads like this one tend to ignore. To blatantly paraphrase and mangle the post: "the closer the two tech bases are to being exactly the same, the easier it is to see where they're still different and point out how that's still a huge balance problem. Give the iXL deathless side torsos and it becomes easy to see that the iXL is still two slots bigger than, and thus still inferior to, the cXL. If the two sides had wildly different stuff, with each tech base having extremely divergent equipment with tons of differences everywhere tuned to give roughly the same win rate between the two, then the differences stop mattering and become more about what a given player likes to play.

PARITY is the bane of balance. EQUIVALENCE is what we need. The bigger and more pronounced the differences between the two, and the more differences there are, the less those differences matter in the grand scheme of things."

Some folks have suggested giving the iXL the ability to innately buff the STs of whatever 'Mech it's in to match the durability of the 'Mech's center torso, so that losing an ST takes just as long as getting cored out and the iXL's "disadvantage" is effectively nullified. That's the sort of wild crazy idea we need more of, not a four hundredth low-hanging fruit "just make them the same!" thread.

Sameness is bad. if you want XLs that survive a shoulder blowout, we have Clan 'Mechs for that. The Sphere should have a different answer, so that everybody has more, and more different, cool things to play with.

[spottiedogman]

I find it intriguing that players wanted FP or CW so that they would have some lore based game play but when the Clans whip the IS's butt in the first round as lore has been told they complain. But there again this game only chooses to be BT when it suits PGI.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

spottiedogman, on 19 December 2016 - 03:20 PM, said:

I find it intriguing that players wanted FP or CW so that they would have some lore based game play but when the Clans whip the IS's butt in the first round as lore has been told they complain. But there again this game only chooses to be BT when it suits PGI.

They kinda had to ignore that facet. Clans had less resources and manpower in BT, that was their "balancing" mechanism. Limiting the number of players that can play on the Clan side won't fix anything, if anything it just drives Clan players that are on the outside away from FP or the game entirely so the idea that we could ever follow BT in that regard was naive and short-sighted.

[Revis Volek]

Mystere, on 19 December 2016 - 02:14 PM, said:

Hmm. Have people conveniently forgotten the time when the Clans were reduced to a handful of planets?


In a related note, one of my crazy (or not so crazy -- you be the judge) solutions is to have tonnage dynamically increase/decrease once the front lines goes nearer/farther one's home and "major" planets. For the RP impaired, just imagine it as your supply lines getting affected by distance.

<weight changes should be within reasonable limits, of course>

SA remembers....


The days (well maybe day, might have been a week) of ERPPC thuds and uber quirked IS mechs pushing us back to the hole from whence we crawled.


It was weird but at the same time glorious.

[3xnihilo]

Besh, on 19 December 2016 - 02:46 PM, said:

A partial fix at least - and one the would not require any Dev intervention at all - would be if IS PUGs and small Groups would simply STOP being ultracool-silent-one-man-armies...and would TF start to try to comprehend Teamwork .

Use VOIP or TextChat, focus fire, do not play for your own Stats but in a way your Team can win...that kind of stuff .

Too many are simply not doing anything of it .

And THEN whine at the End of a Match about OP ClanTech. After not even TRYING a concerted effort to beat them .

Ofc does not make it any easier when 12 IS Pugs get matched up against full 12men Clan Groups....or an enemy Team made out of KCom, EVIL and 54MR Groups...

This makes the assumption that solo and small group IS pilots are less likely to use comms or teamwork than clan solo and small group pilots. It seems unlikely that that is the case. It is more probable that there are more organized groups on the clan side. So what you are recommending is that IS solo pilots be held to a higher standard than clan solo pilots. The logical outworking of this is that more people will prefer to go clan. I'm not arguing that teamwork or improving your game play is bad, but that one should be able to take a clan or IS contract and expect to have similar results from similar effort/skill. So, the main question to answer is why do the big groups prefer to go with clan contracts and is there a way to make both sides equally attractive to get the organized groups split more evenly between the two.

[Revis Volek]

1453 R, on 19 December 2016 - 02:55 PM, said:

*Wall of finely composed words*

honestly, i think normalizing XL eingines is the only way we will ever get any kinda of balance in this game. Its the biggest tech disparity and one of the more major motivating factors in why you should take a Clam mech over InnerBeers.

Weapons have been adjusted, heat has been fudged, TT values thrown away, DHS buffed, nerfed, buffed, berfed, JJ are no more and even when they were Clans where not around to see them. All of these changes and we still have the same conversations time and time again.

At what point will everyone just take the plunge and see what this "cheap fix" can really do for TTK, gameplay and fun in general for everyone here?

I'm ready for it, and i know im not alone but we have to convince PGi to let us see it in the Test Server or something first and thats nigh impossible.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Yeonne Greene, on 18 December 2016 - 10:10 PM, said:

Was never even a real disadvantage. Clans could always drop their firepower to IS levels and run cold as ice if they wanted to.

Your joking right?

Let me go over this again.

IS Mech

2 LPL
6 ML
52 damage
38 heat


Clan Mech

2 cLPL
4 cER ML
54 Damage
44 Heat


Pretty much the same damage only the Clan mech runs about 20% hotter so yeah sure, a Clan mech can drop down to IS levels of damage and run Ice Cold...err..wait, 44 is bigger than 38 right??

[El Bandito]

Yellonet, on 19 December 2016 - 02:00 PM, said:

Yeah, how's that dark side treating ya'?
Time to change that sig soon?

Dark side is treating me real good, as I had strings of victories. I joined [MS] yesterday (swell guys), which means I managed to involve myself with two things I dislike about CW--Clan mechs and big merc units. My conversion to the dark side is complete. I'm thinking of changing the sig to that of a Night Gyr or KDK-3.

[Y E O N N E]

Viktor Drake, on 19 December 2016 - 05:08 PM, said:

Your joking right?

Let me go over this again.

IS Mech

2 LPL
6 ML
52 damage
38 heat


Clan Mech

2 cLPL
4 cER ML
54 Damage
44 Heat


Pretty much the same damage only the Clan mech runs about 20% hotter so yeah sure, a Clan mech can drop down to IS levels of damage and run Ice Cold...err..wait, 44 is bigger than 38 right??

You are not very good at this.

The 24 DHS the Clan build (assuming TBR with one S-torso) gives you has a heat-cap of 85.2. One shot from your alpha puts you at 51.6%.

The 20 DHS the IS 'Mech gives you (assuming BK) has a heat-cap of 78.0. One shot from your alpha puts you at 48.7%

Golly jee, near-enough-as-makes-no-difference! But wait, sonny, there's more!

The dissipation on the Clan build gives you a rate of 4.71. It takes 9.3 seconds to dissipate the heat completely.

The dissipation on the IS build gives you a rate of 3.85. It takes 9.4 seconds to dissipate the heat completely.

Hmmm, pretty close again! But we're not through yet!

If we drop the S-torso on the TBR and run no JJs (the BK doesn't get JJs anyway), we can fit in another two DHS, giving us a cap of 88.8 and a dissipation of 5.06. We now hit 49.5% on the first shot and get rid of the heat in 8.7 seconds...a whole 0.7 seconds faster.

And on top of having nearly identical soak ratio and dissipation rates, you get to start dealing your full damage a whole 150+ meters sooner! Because targeting computers and ER lasers! Yeah!

Now how about a build that actually competes in the same bracket, buddy?

7x cMPL
56 Damage
46.8 Heat

Same 26 DHS. 52.7% after firing, takes 9.2 seconds to dissipate completely. On top of this, you are dishing out 65.9 damage per second over the course of your burn, which is more than the 57.8 you get from your named IS build, and also more than the 64.4 you get from the 3xLPL+5xML build you would find on the BK in a real match. A BK which, by the way, runs 19 DHS, so it soaks to 53% in one shot and has to wait 10.6 seconds to fire again!


And you people wonder why the IS get heat gen quirks. It's because not only do they actually run just as hot for less damage and less range, they have to be able to fire more once they finally get in range to compensate for the damage they received on the way in.

This schooling session is now closed. Next time, do your homework before mouthing off.

Edit: Oh, and the BK has its hard-points at belly-button level. Enjoy!

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 19 December 2016 - 06:16 PM.