Jingseng, on 19 December 2016 - 11:49 PM, said:
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.
1) No way in hell are you going to have any game company manually move players from one faction to another. Not even WoW at its height of popularity (WotLK over 12m subs) even dared to manually force population moves. What they did do was offer free server transfer or faction changes on servers that had population or faction problems, and it was voluntary. And considering you arent locked in to a faction for faction play, forcing players out of a faction is not only a betrayal of trust in the highest magnitude, but it also shows that the players are the ones breaking the system. Most of the top tier players went clan partly because clans are superior in every way that doesnt involve AC weapons, and top players dont want competition they want Cbills. Its mostly the players fault for this utter imbalance, but its partially PGI's fault because some of the major weapon/combat systems that helped IS push back the clans arent in the game. There is no melee combat, there is no light fusion engines, there is no new weapon systems and there sure as hell are no IS omnimechs.
2) Also wont work because certain factions are larger in lore, there are more Davion or Wolf pilots than Steiner or Smoke Jaguar. And even if they wanted to introduce population caps on factions, who gets to be the deciding factor? A player can just go merc and then only take contracts/requests for support for the faction they want anyway. It wouldnt solve the problem either.
3) While this is the only realistic thing you have said, that just punishes players for being good and removes motivation for them to play or at the very least discourages them from ever playing FW again until 5.0 rolls around. And instead of solving the problem you just made more problems and potentially poisoned the game for those players.
Its a problem when a faction has absolutely everything superior to another faction, then ***** about getting nerfs because you are rofl-stomping every single planet thats up for grabs. And the problems with Clan vs IS is a problem thats inherent from the tabletop game and is exacerbated in a live environment instead of turn based combat.
If you want more balanced gamplay, there has to be several big changes made to the inherent game, and they are changes that are going to drastically reduce the overpowering mechs that clan has vs what IS has available to them
1) First and foremost, we need more urban and/or more "brawler" maps. We have had so many new maps and reworked maps that have massive open spaces that clan weapons are just better at. Nearly every single clan weapon not only has longer effective ranges, but they weigh less and take up less critical slots. So in order to reduce a lot of those advantages. we need more maps that allow mechs to close in and fight in tighter ranges that negate the range clan weapons have and where IS weapons excel. Pretty much the only brawling maps left in the game are Veridian Bog, HPG manifold, and to a lesser extent Mining Colony and Canyon Network. While its great that there are a lot more maps that allow long range fire to be effective (compared to the original forest colony and frozen city which had pretty limited firing lines), the problem with Clan range superiority isnt offset with lots of terrain, in fact a lot of maps are missing a lot of protection from it (like Polar Highland and Alpine).
2) Introduce new equipment in line with what the IS was working on in the current time period. With all the upsides that clan mechs have with none of the downsides that IS mechs do have leave you with massive performance disparities. Clan XL's keep chugging (at reduced effectiveness) when losing a torso, and can pack more weapons and heatsinks than what IS does. Without access to other technologies like light fusion engines or melee weapons, the few things that IS actually did better than clans are gone. We also need IS omnimechs to start rolling out of the facility lines and into our mech bays to help bridge some of the disparity.
3) Contracts are going to have to be managed on a much smaller level than players are probably going to be comfortable with. You would have to limit or even penalize too many players jumping into a faction or taking a contract. Thats something NOBODY would be happy with, but if you want more player balance between factions something needs to be done. The problem with targeting particular skill levels is that it would punish or discourage good players from actually playing the game mode. And thats just going to turn it back into a wasteland.