134 replies to this topic

[ProfPyro]

Next hotfix prediction: Clan scouting tonnage reduced to 20. IS remains at 55.

[Kmieciu]

ProfPyro, on 19 December 2016 - 10:39 PM, said:

Next hotfix prediction: Clan scouting tonnage reduced to 20. IS remains at 55.

I shall collect your clan tears and use them for a third cool shot in Scouting.

[NeoMaddy]

The amount of Clan players in here crying "wolf" (pun intended) is crazy. How about waiting to see the results of the change before complaining that you're being thrown under the bus? Not once during this cycle have you been at a disadvantage, or some would argue even parity. When Clans start losing more battles then they win, then entertaining the notion that they are being nerfed too hard holds water. As long as Clans are still winning by a large margin, such arguments are ridiculous.

[naterist]

heres what i got from this

• "WE GET IT, CLANS ARE OP, STOP BLOWING UP OUR INBOX'S"
  
• "maybe the streakcrow is op af..... maybe"
  
• "WILL THE GOD **** TOP UNITS SPREAD THE F*** OUT ALREADY?!?!?!"
  
• RUSS: dont trip, we anticipated this, are workin on it, and heres the dropdeck tonnage changes until we got something better.

i hope this whole thing was a wake up call and that pgi starts to focus on real balance in the coming months. also, i hope theyve realized how vital it is that IS be moved up to complete weapoins sets with all the uacs, lbx's and streaks implemented.

[Falconer Cyrus]

Hey, removing streak crows from scouting is not enough??! Are you kidding?

[Talos7]

Love how people don't read why they changed the tonnage, or go out of their way to purposely misconstrue the intent.

No this tonnage tweak does not reflect that PGI thinks the Clans are OP. This Hot Fix is not about their equipment. It is about the population distribution on the servers. Because most of the larger units are Clan at the moment and they want them to jump ship back to IS. Once the population gets close to even these restrictions will be lifted (if not feel free to run rampant on the forums).

In the meantime, any IS who cry that Clans are still OP with these nerfs to their drop decks because they still beat them like red headed step-children should feel ashamed.

TLDR: Clan Population > IS. PGI wants to balance faction pop (read: greater skill on the Clan side. i.e. teamwork OP, learn it).

[X Player]

I wonder why they dont just increase contract bonuses for IS by like 200k if the population of high skill units really is the problem. As it is now these units will change factions, gain an unfair tonnage advantage and completely obliterate any clan forces. But we shall see how it turns out.

[Jingseng]

Love how most people also don't get that the clan players are not crying over 5 tons =p Read =p

It is how the change is arbitrary and solves literally nothing... it is about how the change targets exactly one mech, and appears to be reactionary from all the IS CRYING =p

the point being raised is, When Does This Stop Because This Is Kinda Stupid. Stormcrow too op? ok now it's gone. Fine.

But then the next mechs, will they be 'op' too? Will there be incessant crying about them (precedent says: yes)? And then you ban them too... When Does This Stop Because This Is Kinda Stupid.

If it is, in fact about player populations of skilled players:

1) Move them yourself as PGI =p It makes no sense to apply blanket penalty/annoyances and blanket bonuses to obtain precision results. It makes even less sense to keep doing so when the petty incentives (if you call crutches that) and pettier still penalties (if you call crutches that)Aren't Doing Working At All.

2) Institute Population Caps - seriously, this is not a new solution by any means. Tie it in with a cbill sink of some arbitrary sort, and you are fine.

3) Apply penalties/incentives ONLY to those players who are creating the imbalance - clearly PGI has certain players in mind or it would not be able to say there are imbalances in highly skilled players. Certainly PGI has some means of tracking those players and identifying them/distinguishing them from the rest of us rabble, or it would not be able to say there are imbalances in highly skilled players.

Certainly deficits and boons to JUST those players to get JUST them to act will create the so called desired balance.

Certainly blanket deficits and blanket boons to get EVERYONE ELSE to act will do NOTHING to address the so called root imbalances.

So, do we "clan players" give a Salty Tear about five tons? No. Take your precious five tons. There is a bigger picture the rest of us are looking at.

And if the players just wont do as you want them to, as PGI, you should either:

1) give it up and stop antagonizing the players

2) make it happen yourself directly.

[FrostyBurn]

I have a better buff suggestion for IS. Ban LRMs, LL etc. We are being punished for IS dropping crap. Sure I love my Streakcrow and I understand that you hate it but it sometimes takes me 500dmg to kill one IS mech. Your Centurions and Hunchbacks takes some time to bring down.

When we (JF) couldn't hold on to a singel planet we buckled down and trained hard. Its sad to see that IS gets the easy way out.

That being said it was not fun to just roll over the whole IS last phase.

[TheCharlatan]

Sorry PGI, but balancing FW based on the population makes no sense.
You can't just nerf clan tonnage because "high tier teams" are on it's side.
That's because this means that the high tier teams will keep winning (because they are high tier teams slaughtering pugs) and you will instead make the clan pugs lose more often (making them bitter)... that's not balance.
What about you make rules and incentives to make so that the larger units try to divide evenly between IS and Clans?
Make it so that just a small number of "contracts" exist for merc units, or reduce the income (both in c-bills and XP) for large units if they are in the same side as other large units, while giving incentives if fighting for a side with too few of them.
Ideally, you want large teams to divide evenly on both sides.
Without this, all you will have is that suddenly all big unts will go IS side at a certain point, and have the opposite problem (just like every single time).

Edited by TheCharlatan, 20 December 2016 - 12:09 AM.

[Vellron2005]

OK, great that PGI is fixing things.. but how about fixing some bugs?

Like the one that says I don't get any money off an invasion match and actually LOSE money if I use consumables?

Or the one that says if I alt+tab out and back into a FW screen, I get graphic glitches?

Or the one where the MWO taskbar icon does not flash when a FW match is found?

[Wraith 1]

Let Clanners keep their Stormcrows, just ban LRMs and SSRMs for both sides.

[Omaha]

You cant balance organization and cooperation period. You cant control the player.

I know i know ppl love the idea of FW. But I personally believe they should just take the wins loses of everyone and dynamically change the map based on the people win/loss of what they pilot. Screw having to pick planets and such (factions, units, etc) annnd guess what No more buckets!

Edited by Omaha, 20 December 2016 - 12:19 AM.

[NeoMaddy]

Jingseng, on 19 December 2016 - 11:49 PM, said:

snip

I don't think you can call this change reactionary to IS crying, I think you look at the win rates of Clans vs. IS and call it reactionary to that. Additionally, it's not just to take out the Stormcrow, though that is the effect. Essentially they've already used this style of bandaid fix to Invasion, so it's simple to apply it to Scouting. And if the Stormcrow happens to be overperforming? All the better.

They're utilizing things they can try NOW, not nuanced strategies for long-term balance.

Edited by NeoMaddy, 20 December 2016 - 12:22 AM.

[AngrySpartan]

I told it when scouting was introduced and I'll keep saying it now: eliminating a single mech mech from scouting to solve balance issues is plain wrong. There always be an outlier, if not SCR, when HBKIIC, when HMN, when something else, etc. (besides, SCRs go down like a dominos, when people can aim their legs)

Solving population issues by playing with tonnage restrictions could be the only dynamic solution PGI has right now, but in the long run - nothing will change. Larger units will adopt and will still kick *** and when they will swap sides it will start all over again, but with clan PUGs being a punching bag this time.

Considering scouting: give us pre-match lobby again and restrict the Total drop weight of 4 mechs to 190-200t. Let the players decide what to bring in FW, do not decide it yourself.

And for once, have a look at the missile weapons other than regular SRMs. Both LRMs and Streaks have horrible outdated game mechanics: 20% of time they are annoying as hell and 80% they are absolutely useless.

Edited by AngrySpartan, 20 December 2016 - 02:07 AM.

[Kmieciu]

X Player, on 19 December 2016 - 11:47 PM, said:

I wonder why they dont just increase contract bonuses for IS by like 200k if the population of high skill units really is the problem.

First of all, C-bills are not an incentive for people who already have their perfect Clan drop deck and just want to kill a lot of IS mooks.

Edited by Kmieciu, 20 December 2016 - 01:43 AM.

[naterist]

to every clanner complaining, heres how it is right now, a coordinated group in IS can wreck pugs, coordinated its 50/50 against other coordinated units based on skill gap for each side. for pugs on both sides, its lopsided to clans favor. for clan units v IS pugs it obviously clans rollin all over them.

if you look in the patch notes youll note that they acknowledged that balance is a currently being worked on, but the current tonnage changes are to keep the units spreading out until they can fix the balance issues.

this is a bit of a theme, it seems like balancing the game has been a focus for a very long time, but was stalled by the community rejection of energy draw, so now their trying to find other ways to do it. that would be why the mech quirks and weapon values have been getting tweaked a lot recently, much of it with the information they gathered in the last public test server and current, live results, which they have been developing new ways to track for some time now. since octobers patch at the very least.

[Colonel ONeill]

Less Invasion and more of the Quickplay gamemodes?
This does not sound right.

Besides Conquest and maybe a form of Escort I don't think the players actually enjoy Quickplay with redrops.

[DivBy0]

No, they enjoy it much. Skirmish with redrops can be great too. Many new player had enter the game mode in the last week. Surley they will be farmed out of FP soon but it shows that they are willing to play it if they had a chance to win.

I am sick of the old invasion maps and what we realy need is a form of matchmaker before it is to late.

Colonel ONeill, on 20 December 2016 - 02:35 AM, said:

Less Invasion and more of the Quickplay gamemodes?
This does not sound right.

Besides Conquest and maybe a form of Escort I don't think the players actually enjoy Quickplay with redrops.

Edited by von Haudegen, 20 December 2016 - 03:01 AM.

[Falconer Cyrus]

TheCharlatan, on 20 December 2016 - 12:08 AM, said:

What about you make rules and incentives to make so that the larger units try to divide evenly between IS and Clans?

This should written with 2-meter letters and nailed to every wall in PGI office!