24 replies to this topic

[Jman5]

Inner Sphere: 9 of the top 20 Loyalist units have a negative WLR

Clan: 1 of the top 20 Loyalists units has a negative WLR

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Inner Sphere: 11 of the top 20 Loyalist pilots have a negative WLR

Clan: 0 of the top 20 loyalist pilots have a negative WLR

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Inner Sphere: 6 out of 6 IS factions have a negative WLR

Clan: 0 out of 4 Clan factions have a negative WLR


This will not last. IS players will simply stop playing and go back to quickplay if this trend continues and you will have your ghost town again. I played a game yesterday against at least 9 tier 1 players. 4 of the people on my team were openly saying they weren't going to play FP anymore.

This isn't me trying to browbeat units into joining Inner Sphere. PGI is the only ones who can fix this. Individuals will make choices that they believe are in their individual interest. It's up to PGI to make changes that guide those self-interests to a more equal skill distribution.

The Contract system needs to be reformed to more accurately reflect the strength of not just individual houses, but the entire faction.

1. Reset the factions to clean out all the innactive units/players that are clogging up places like Davion. Stop counting all these innactive accounts that are still a part of units every time they join a faction. One way to do this is by simply not counting players until they get seeded on the FP leaderboard (10 games minimum). Another is to stop counting anyone who hasn't played FP in 2-3 weeks.

2. Now that we're all in one bucket, we need an overarching counter for Clan/IS strength. In a way it's fortunate that it's Clans who are strong at the moment. The fact that there are 2 more IS houses means that IS could be in a dominant position while still having better contracts simply by spreading out more. We need to plan ahead so that Clans don't eventually get rolled over. Either that or you introduce two more Clan factions to make it equal.

3. Use PSR of the active players as a balancing mechanic. Once you stop counting all the innactive players, you can use PSR to get a rough approximation of faction strength and make automatic tonnage adjustments without having to go in there and manually fiddle with it. To be honest, I don't trust you guys to keep up with it.

4. Give losing players some sort of Consolation Prize related to their Contract Bonus. Currently these contract bonuses mean next to nothing for guys who never win games. If they're making good cbills even on their losses you at least give them something to soften the blow. Make it a percent of their earnings so players can't just afk farm and make it less than what you get for winning.

Edited by Jman5, 19 December 2016 - 11:54 AM.

[A Shoddy Rental Mech]

10/10 Top Loyalist units are Clan
9/10 Top Merc units are clan.

I.S. teams are 19 times more likely to face a top ranked team.

[naterist]

well, im not really to mad about this anymore. pgi said theyd fix que times, and they did. they never mentioned anything about trying to fix balance in 4.1 even though balance was always an issue.

when everyone else leaves, the ones who stayed during 3.0 will see better que times, and when people leave, itll still be faster to get in a match then in 3.0

if fw 4.2 comes out and balance is still an issue, THEN ill reinstall the rage goggles. until then, its up to us to gather info so our community leaders can go to russ and explain things in the next roundtable, and only then will balance start to be a thing again.

Edited by naterist, 19 December 2016 - 12:49 PM.

[Aiden Skye]

Jman5, on 19 December 2016 - 11:47 AM, said:

This will not last. IS players will simply stop playing and go back to quickplay if this trend continues and you will have your ghost town again. I played a game yesterday against at least 9 tier 1 players. 4 of the people on my team were openly saying they weren't going to play FP anymore.

To be fair EVIL gets that kind of reaction from pugs on both sides of FW.

[Lehmund]

naterist, on 19 December 2016 - 12:49 PM, said:

well, im not really to mad about this anymore. pgi said theyd fix que times, and they did. they never mentioned anything about trying to fix balance in 4.1 even though balance was always an issue.

when everyone else leaves, the ones who stayed during 3.0 will see better que times, and when people leave, itll still be faster to get in a match then in 3.0

if fw 4.2 comes out and balance is still an issue, THEN ill reinstall the rage goggles. until then, its up to us to gather info so our community leaders can go to russ and explain things in the next roundtable, and only then will balance start to be a thing again.

Absolutely love the reasoning here.

Less whining about something that has existed in past Waves.
More praising of PGI's fix on what they meant to fix.
More recommendations on how to fix the balance issues, hoping there will be some initial attempts to do so in Wave 4.2

Just like any competitive multiplayer game, balance is a difficult and constant challenge. We just need to express ourselves and make sure PGI gets good valid information, not assumptions. (btw, good data on rankings between IS and Clans. That's actually valuable info independent on the details. )

[1 21 Giggawatts]

Hallelujiah!! I for one think the consolidation of factions has been the shot in the arm that CW needed.

Now I agree that something may need to be done regarding merc contracts being more evenly distributed, but that wasnt ever on the table for 4.1

PGI have done a bloody great job with this patch IMHO!

A lot of potato'es have come back to try out FW again and got farmed by the units or groups of players who have formed strong bonds dropping in a mostly highly competitive environment in the last 6 months.

CW and MWO in general has always been about adapting anyway as the changes have been constant and the meta is always shifting. ... seriously, it is what it is, adapt to it.

Edited by 1 21 Giggawatts, 19 December 2016 - 09:44 PM.

[Natural Predator]

When i drop solo I am popping 1900-3000 damage a match and 4-6 kills and cant carry hard enough (Last match 6 kills 2200 damage). The 25 tons x 12 mech advantage is so telling in PUG VS PUG. You cant cut through 3x assault mechs or 4x heavy mechs fast enough. And when you force what Merc there are in Clan over to IS its gonna get real bad.

[meteorol]

Jman5, on 19 December 2016 - 11:47 AM, said:

3. Use PSR of the active players as a balancing mechanic. Once you stop counting all the innactive players, you can use PSR to get a rough approximation of faction strength and make automatic tonnage adjustments without having to go in there and manually fiddle with it. To be honest, I don't trust you guys to keep up with it.

Privat Matchcounter Rating even fails for matchmaking. I can't see it being a good factor to balance with. Its upward trend limits its use to determine average strenght of a faction. There are plenty of t1 and t2 players who can't hit an atlas 30m infront of them. On the other hand there are quite a few pretty good CW players who are low tiers, because CW matches don't count towards PSR. If they never played anything but CW (and shockingly, there are people like that), they might aswell be t5 while they could have easily gone up to t1 if they played QP.

Furthermore, i don't believe people who are too bad to compete with others should be artificially put into the position to do so by massively increasing the tonnage they can work with. That is not how PVP games work. If someone else is better than you, you are going to lose. That is the very core of PVP gaming. I have never seen a game that intentionally "buffs" bad players or whole factions to get around skill difference.

Fix the underlying issue, which is Clan tech having a slight edge at the moment. If this doesn't lead to a better distribution of good players on both sides, give incentives to make people play on the weaker side (and by that i'm not meaning 100k more cbills. Hand out small amounts of MC).

The amount of IS loyalist puggels that make t5s look like godtier players in comparison is something PGI can't and shouldn't balance for.

Giving bad players enough crutches so they can evenly compete with players better than them is simply not something suited for a online PVP game. Adressing the reason for the skill disparity between faction is the first thing that should be done.

Edited by meteorol, 19 December 2016 - 10:12 PM.

[Cath]

I have to say I laughed to myself reading this thread. Every positive response came from a clan player. It's the same symptom of "I'm winning therefore everything is ok" that permeates the game. The gg's from only the winners most of the time, ect.

I dropped today in FW for the first time in a long time to try for the 12 day of xmas thing. With a 3 man group. Good players (at least the other two - good t1's) - We fought a match against EVIL and got farmed in our spawns for half the game. This was a conquest match on a regular QP map (the one with the caldera in the middle...name escapes me at the moment) The map is too small for respawns, the dropships don't dissuade camping, several other things popped up as well.

I've been around long enough to have been stomped before, but this was different. Worse. I can deal with it to a point, but won't try FW again regardless of the carrot PGI tries to dangle my way. Myself and my unit mates will not drop in any of FW modes again specifically due to that terrible experience, it's just not worth the bother. It's far more than the stomp, that happens. It's the fundamental flaws in the design of the mode. We played it ONCE and saw many problems with it, we were making comments to each other about the issues as we were playing the match.

Balance and enjoyment of the game mode need to be addressed or the normal players of this game will not bother with FW.

By "normal" I'm referring to the casual to serious long term player. The bread and butter of the game as it were. Not the T1 player in the uber competitive unit, but your T3, T2 guy who likes his QP que with a couple friends. When the balance of the gamemodes AND the units is this screwed up players will flee the mode.

[naterist]

fix balance, use the mc suggestion to divide top tier merc units, and buff IS to match clans in their own unique way. also, a two teired fw with the lower teir being for the terribad potatoes, and the main fw for teir 4-1. add mentors and whatnot as suggested in another thread. itll fix 95% of the issues with fw.

[MischiefSC]

meteorol, on 19 December 2016 - 10:11 PM, said:

Privat Matchcounter Rating even fails for matchmaking. I can't see it being a good factor to balance with. Its upward trend limits its use to determine average strenght of a faction. There are plenty of t1 and t2 players who can't hit an atlas 30m infront of them. On the other hand there are quite a few pretty good CW players who are low tiers, because CW matches don't count towards PSR. If they never played anything but CW (and shockingly, there are people like that), they might aswell be t5 while they could have easily gone up to t1 if they played QP.

Furthermore, i don't believe people who are too bad to compete with others should be artificially put into the position to do so by massively increasing the tonnage they can work with. That is not how PVP games work. If someone else is better than you, you are going to lose. That is the very core of PVP gaming. I have never seen a game that intentionally "buffs" bad players or whole factions to get around skill difference.

Fix the underlying issue, which is Clan tech having a slight edge at the moment. If this doesn't lead to a better distribution of good players on both sides, give incentives to make people play on the weaker side (and by that i'm not meaning 100k more cbills. Hand out small amounts of MC).

The amount of IS loyalist puggels that make t5s look like godtier players in comparison is something PGI can't and shouldn't balance for.

Giving bad players enough crutches so they can evenly compete with players better than them is simply not something suited for a online PVP game. Adressing the reason for the skill disparity between faction is the first thing that should be done.

This problem has been developing for 2 years. Go back a mile in the FW threads, you'll see by the end of CW 1 players were saying the imbalance between IS/Clan tech was getting the better teams/players to go where the better gear was.

Then as players got better and started looking for better teams to play with and learn from.... they were all in the Clan side, or mercs playing Clans. So they went there.

Then the people who were good leaders and developers started looking at their emptying teams and groups available vs what sort of people they could play with/learn from if they quit and went merc/Clan... and did so.

Then they, in turn, reached out to their friends from their old unit and people they knew on the IS side who were good players and whenever possible poached them.

A slow, steady, inevitable drain. Ironically the balance isn't nearly as bad now as it was 2 years ago but 2 years of the same problem has created a massive, constant drain. Drained of skilled players and drop callers tons of units just fell apart or dissolved. Even with the 'return' of many people to try 4.1 you can count on 1 hand with fingers left over the IS units who can field 10 people with the same tag in a single drop. Hell, you can count the ones who can field 6. While there's drops getting built on TS it's 1-3 people from a variety of units all cobbling a 8-12man together for a few matches. Nothing at all like the cohesion and uniformity of purpose and direction you need to start rebuilding a unit, strategy, decks and tactics.

all the f***s to give were farmed from that field a good long while ago.

The tonnage buff, utter irrelevant of faction membership and return of ghost drops will chase some units to IS, for a bit. Until they find they absolutely can't get a tag on this side due to no way to escape the pugload you have to carry and they'll trickle back. The six months of consistent good teams/players to drop with and learn from just to *start* developing what's left in the IS side who would even be willing to pay attention to that sort of stuff isn't going to happen.

What's left of units and IS players has been so thoroughly burned to the ground and raked over you won't spark it up again with napalm. Those who are left are jaded, more than a bit bitter, disaffected, pessimistic and stubborn as an angry mule. The occasional visit of some mercs on vacation from playing Clans isn't new. Many of them are ex-members of IS units, having left long ago for better options in merc units and playing Clans.

Yeah. Fixing tech imbalance would be a good start. However the reality is that this situation has built over 2 years and won't just flip around in a week or a month, nor is there anything in the development path of CW as presented that would even start to change it.

Bribing units to switch sides for a week isn't a fix. Artificially buffing terribads so they can compete with more experienced players who migrate to Clans/mercs is the opposite of a fix. Creating a more balanced fields and rewarding skilled players for playing skilled players is a start, drastically better tools for helping train up those terribads to at least T3 is another one.

[Appogee]

IMHO there needs to be a matchmaker which at least tries to have large teams playing large teams (ie instead of large teams playing small teams and PUGs).

Large teams with teamwork are OP - on both sides. We can't expect PUGs and small units to just keep showing up to get farmed by large units.

[z3a1ot]

Appogee, on 20 December 2016 - 11:29 PM, said:

IMHO there needs to be a matchmaker which at least tries to have large teams playing large teams (ie instead of large teams playing small teams and PUGs).

Large teams with teamwork are OP - on both sides. We can't expect PUGs and small units to just keep showing up to get farmed by large units.

Pretty much this. At least place some kind of rudimentary MM that tries to put groups against groups and if its impossible to do that only then you pit them against pugs.

PUG on PUG games that I played so far were pretty much close and good even though clan pugs are slightly better and have better mechs.

[ice trey]

The game is structured in a way that encourages players to cluster together in a group.

In matches, they clump into a death ball.
In units, the biggest units have the most sway.
In FW, the majority of the units cluster together into one faction.

PGI needs to change the game in such a way that it is a bad idea to cluster together all the time. The very last time it was a bad idea was when Conquest mode capture points were easier to cap and harvested points more quickly, but then came the whining of "This is about stompy robots why should I care about objectives?" and they promptly neutered it.

[Fuerchtenichts]

Lets wait and see how the whole situation is changing after the TOP29 units are now favoring IS. (sadly the data from PGI can not be validated regarding "active players per unit")

[A Shoddy Rental Mech]

The Nerf Bat, on 19 December 2016 - 12:07 PM, said:

10/10 Top Loyalist units are Clan
9/10 Top Merc units are clan.

I.S. teams are 19 times more likely to face a top ranked team.

Looks like MS 228 and SA went I.S.
Since Dude fell out of top 10, this still leaves 3 of the top 10 Merc units as I.S.
Top 10 Loyalist units are still clan.

Not really a game changing shift.

[Appogee]

ice trey, on 21 December 2016 - 01:48 AM, said:

The game is structured in a way that encourages players to cluster together in a group.

In matches, they clump into a death ball.
In units, the biggest units have the most sway.
In FW, the majority of the units cluster together into one faction.

Astutely observed.

[FallingAce]

Fuerchtenichts, on 21 December 2016 - 01:52 AM, said:

Lets wait and see how the whole situation is changing after the TOP29 units are now favoring IS. (sadly the data from PGI can not be validated regarding "active players per unit")

Total population is irrelevant.

SRMinExile currently #23 On the I.S. board with 36 memebers. 4 members on the leaderboards.

Just looking that up has made me very sad.

[Appogee]

z3a1ot, on 21 December 2016 - 01:38 AM, said:

PUG on PUG games that I played so far were pretty much close and good even though clan pugs are slightly better and have better mechs.

I've played 7 Matches as IS and 7 as Clan, since FP4.1 was patched in.

I've lost 12 of those 14 matches, despite consistently making a top 3 contribution in damage and kills.

My observations are:

• the side with a team of 5 or 6 on it beat the opposing PUGs every time.
  
• Clan PUGs are just as bad as IS PUGs, they just last longer (Clan XL and range advantage when hiding).
  
• the drop tonnage difference did make a difference in non-invasion matches, when it was PUG v PUG.
  
• Some of Clan losses were close. Clan teams threw away easy victories by being over-confident/sloppy.

Point 2 surprised me. I had previously believed Clan PUGs were better.


Point 4 annoyed me. It was like some of the good Clan unit players were bored of winning, took it for granted, and just did silly things to keep themselves entertained.

Anyway, these are my observations.

Edited by Appogee, 21 December 2016 - 02:19 AM.

[Fuerchtenichts]

FallingAce, on 21 December 2016 - 02:12 AM, said:

Total population is irrelevant.

SRMinExile currently #23 On the I.S. board with 36 memebers. 4 members on the leaderboards.

Just looking that up has made me very sad.

Well this is a just view on the most active part of the community. This population is clearly relevant but also depending on the quality of their PUGs to win planets.