23 replies to this topic

[Duke Nedo]

...61/67 games.

http://imgur.com/a/xJ0EG

Edited by Duke Nedo, 19 December 2016 - 07:36 AM.

[Vonbach]

You mean the clanners have the better mechs because of the tech difference.

[Mcgral18]

I'll be dropping Spheroid in a group, in a few days.


We'll let you know if it's largely Potato or tech imbalance
There is certainly a population imbalance (meaning fewer groups, and more Skittle farming on the Spheroid side...which get stomped)

[Darky101]

So F clans!
Drop tonnage to 100, MLX FTW.

And please nerf CERMED range to 20 meters cause it can mount 4.
And please nerf ppcs cause it can mount 1.

And make it start with only one leg cause its clan and fast and dies too hard.

Edited by Darky101, 19 December 2016 - 07:28 AM.

[Duke Nedo]

Yeah, it's not like you can't win or anything. We dropped three times yesterday as IS and won all on more or less stomps. It's just that the average values are very one-sided. A good team will always win against pugs...

[Scyther]

Sort of a chicken and egg problem: Clan mechs have a slight (not huge) edge in range, mobility, engine survivability, firepower/tonnage, and IMO slightly better options for including ECM and JJ in their drop decks than IS. Against that they have some engine, Endo/Ferro, and unwanted fixed item limitations.

Overall I would guesstimate that adds up to about a 5-8% performance edge of Clan mechs vs IS mechs, across the whole range.

What that means is the people who are most determined to win will pick the side with the slight performance edge. Those people are also the ones who will tend to spend more money on better mechs, organize into teams, practice their game play more etc.

They will win a bit more, which means they have more XP, GXP, C-bills. They get more rewards. They will end up being able to more casually fit modules and drop consumables than the people who win less (in this case, IS players). Which contributes more to the IS vs Clan imbalance.

In the past, we have seen that when an apparent advantage occurs on the IS side, many of those 'must win' focussed players will switch sides to exploit the 5 or 10% edge they see in whatever mech is currently OP. The fact that they generally play Clan and only occasionally switch IS shows that Clan mechs have the small but persistent performance edge.

There is also the potential that for many new players their first mechs and first-4-for-a-drop-deck are more likely to be IS than Clan based on C-bill costs, so IS side may simply get more 'newer' players than Clan.

It's a noticeable tech imbalance (which lore wise, should be there), which leads to a substantial player-base bias.

Since it isn't a huge problem in QP (as far as I can tell) it really should have a CW-oriented solution.

Differing tonnage limits matters (and might do the trick, if set correctly) but doesn't address the issue of larger slower mechs vs small maneuverable ones that still pack plenty enough firepower to accomplish the CW objectives.

It might also be possible to simply give IS mechs 10-20% more structure across the board, when in FW. Or to allow IS drop decks to contain 5 mechs instead of 4 (combined with a tonnage bump).

Basically, what needs to be changed is less about individual quirks and more about some broad offset factor to go against that 5-10% Clan tech advantage which leads to the larger player bias advantage. After all, Clans had the tech (and social structure) advantage, but IS had the numbers, home ground, defensive positions, shorter supply lines etc.

[Kdogg788]

I'll have you know we won one of those games there... We also lost 4 or 5. In most games we played em hard but the last game we went against several 228s with a team that had guys who didn't know where the door gen was on our side. <sigh>

-k

[Johnny Z]

Duke Nedo, on 19 December 2016 - 07:23 AM, said:

Yeah, it's not like you can't win or anything. We dropped three times yesterday as IS and won all on more or less stomps. It's just that the average values are very one-sided. A good team will always win against pugs...

I have dropship camped teams with random groups. Well known teams. But the game was a lot cleaner back then.

What would be more accurate for you to have said is teams will use any means necessary to beat pugs. Truth.

I think a random team of experienced players will beat any of these premade teams every time. Without fail. Its my opinion the really bad players need to be in teams because of being really bad at the game. I do think there are legit teams though.

By the way this isn't conjecture. Its fact. Combat logs will show this out of a million games.

Out of all those games there is more than likely 80% to 90% 10 v 12 matches, because teams cannot fight in a fair match against experienced random teams and win.

I play in another shooter game. My favourite saying is "How do you know "their side" is cheating? They are winning."

Also in that other game "their side" actually does get banned for cheating 100x as much.

Edited by Johnny Z, 19 December 2016 - 10:20 AM.

[Kdogg788]

Exactly, the big merc groups will sit there and tell you all day about how they want real competition and good games against good, capable opponents. In the end all they want to do is win, and they will take every advantage they can get be it better mechs, clan XL, quirks when certain IS mechs were really OP, etc. to stomp the "skittles" and "nubs" all night long. There really isn't any other believable option as to why they would all switch to clan as the Phase 4 results started coming in.

-k

[Johnny Z]

Kdogg788, on 19 December 2016 - 10:16 AM, said:

Exactly, the big merc groups will sit there and tell you all day about how they want real competition and good games against good, capable opponents. In the end all they want to do is win, and they will take every advantage they can get be it better mechs, clan XL, quirks when certain IS mechs were really OP, etc. to stomp the &quot;skittles&quot; and &quot;nubs&quot; all night long. There really isn't any other believable option as to why they would all switch to clan as the Phase 4 results started coming in.

-k

In this game? They don't want to win, they want to stomp. Stomp random teams, stomp small teams, what ever.

I don't even keep track of it, but if all the teams do avoid fighting each other like everyone says and the facts do allude to, then they really are out to stomp.

To me as it stands, some of the well know teams are "hacker guilds".

This situation has improved some to be entirely honest.

Also if they don't want to be known has hacker guilds then they can play fair and not run third party program cheats. Again like I said the situation has improved.

This game went from super clean, to super dirt and now its 90% of the time super clean again. Best description I can give simply.

Last of all, from my experience, if a guild is threatened with losing to a random team, there is a 100% chance hacks will be used to avoid it. To this day.

Edited by Johnny Z, 19 December 2016 - 10:29 AM.

[Sagamore]

Yeah but remember Inner Sphere, FP is supposed to be "hard mode". However in this game it's zero sum and if it's hard mode for some it's "easy mode" for others.

[Duke Nedo]

MadBadger, on 19 December 2016 - 09:57 AM, said:

...

To me it just appears like Clan PUGs beat IS PUGs quite reliably, and that Clan Premades beat IS Premades (the few that exist). A few IS premades beat Clan PUGers, a total of 6 wins (we won 3 of these).

[Kdogg788]

I don't know about cheats or "haxxors" but we are a loyalist unit who try to play it by the book and don't take winning the match as the be all end all. Wouldn't surprise me but I won't blame any of our losses this past weekend to hacking. I'd like to see some evidence of these programs and hacks being used though because it was irritate me to no end if it were true.

If anything phase 4.1 underlines the kind of work they need to put in to make the skill trees for IS and clan mechs anywhere near balanced. If they mess it up it could be a bloodbath for IS mechs when quirks and modules are removed. Clan XL alone makes a massive difference. I found that we can play them a good game (although with still not good chances of winning) at the moment on the QP maps but when IS is playing certain invasion maps as the attacker, they are able to put a lot of damage on the IS first wave before the doors even open.

-k

[Jackal Noble]

Are memories so short. Not too long ago IS wiped the floor with anything Clan threw at them be it pug or pre-made.
Could it be that external forces other than in game tech are at play here?...
IE wherever the Mercs go.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say its a cumulative effect of multiple elements and not just tech balance.

[Natred]

I'm curious if this is scouting or invasion matches? If it's scouting you prolly ran into the (D D) yesterday we usually run 4 people all on the clan wolf international TeamSpeak server. Had some good opponents yesterday but we noticed the more we won, the more inner sphere Mechs started getting harder to kill for some strange reason. Guessing the developers were trying to give you a handicap because most(not all) inner sphere pilots do not work as a team very well which we do extremely well.

Edited by Natred, 19 December 2016 - 10:46 AM.

[Johnny Z]

Natred, on 19 December 2016 - 10:40 AM, said:

I'm curious if this is scouting or invasion matches? If it's scouting you prolly ran into the (D D) yesterday we usually run 4 people all on the clan wolf international TeamSpeak server. Had some good opponents yesterday but we noticed the more we won, the more inner sphere Mechs started getting harder to kill for some strange reason. Guessing the developers were trying to give you a handicap because most(not all) inner sphere pilots do not work as a team very well which we do extremely well.

While I think balance is really close, the speed difference between the sides is breaking balance still. So speaking for myself I don't take anything anyone playing Clan at the moment has to say seriously.

[Kdogg788]

JackalBeast, on 19 December 2016 - 10:38 AM, said:

Are memories so short. Not too long ago IS wiped the floor with anything Clan threw at them be it pug or pre-made.
Could it be that external forces other than in game tech are at play here?...
IE wherever the Mercs go.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say its a cumulative effect of multiple elements and not just tech balance.

Mechs still played a big part. If you remember around that time key IS mechs had some insane quirks that made them extremely strong. They've since been dialed down. The mercs will go wherever the tech advantage is and right now it is clan regardless of what the forum debaters say. Take MechCon for example. The teams were composed almost entirely of clan mechs.

-k

[Jess Hazen]

last time i check clan tech was nerfedbatted to high heaven.

[AbyssalTyrant]

Jess Hazen, on 19 December 2016 - 10:54 AM, said:

last time i check clan tech was nerfedbatted to high heaven.

You literally just made a topic about you coming back and reinstalling , why would you think your ( months ?) old experience would be relevant in any shape way or form?

[Novakaine]

Johnny Z, on 19 December 2016 - 10:21 AM, said:

In this game? They don't want to win, they want to stomp. Stomp random teams, stomp small teams, what ever.

I don't even keep track of it, but if all the teams do avoid fighting each other like everyone says and the facts do allude to, then they really are out to stomp.

To me as it stands, some of the well know teams are "hacker guilds".

This situation has improved some to be entirely honest.

Also if they don't want to be known has hacker guilds then they can play fair and not run third party program cheats. Again like I said the situation has improved.

This game went from super clean, to super dirt and now its 90% of the time super clean again. Best description I can give simply.

Last of all, from my experience, if a guild is threatened with losing to a random team, there is a 100% chance hacks will be used to avoid it. To this day.

I don't' think they are "Hacker Guilds" per say.
I have seen what I like to call "strategic shenanigans" happen when needed.
Proof or it didn't happen?
Well compiling it soon and turning it over to PGI.
Post it here?
Nope.
We'll see what happens, gotta love recording software.