ztac, on 25 December 2016 - 01:04 AM, said:
It would seem that if IS are not doing so well it would be more down to clan groups vs IS pugs than some perceived imbalance in regards to IS mechs.
It has been proved so many times that IS has the edge with quirks... They also have the edge in many other areas without quirks!
I don't do CW anymore due to the fact that as a pug we get olled more matches than we could win due to facing IS pre-mades..... See it works both ways!
Happy Christmas!
PGI flat came out and said that more skilled players and units gravitate toward playing the Clans and that, per their data, is why we have the imbalance. This is important because they did not say that the issue was due to IS mechs under performing so just as you point out, IS mechs aren't the issue.
The problem is perception and I am not exactly sure how to fix that because we honestly don't know where that perception is coming from. For example:
1 - Could people be gravitating toward the Clan mechs due to the lore? I mean if you know nothing else about this game except what you have read, can find on Sarna or through other sources, you would only know that the Clan have superior tech. Therefore you might conclude that they are the best mechs in the game.
2 - Could it just be that the Clan lore is cooler? Everyone likes Sparta and lets be honestly the Clan's are kind of like a Space Sparta. They are a warrior race devoted to creating the perfect super soldier. If you are a Clan Mechwarrior you are a genetically super soldier and part of the "nobility" of your society. Kind of like a Knight in the middle ages. If you compare the IS mechwarrior to that well it is a bit lacking, in the IS unless your Prince Victor, you just another cog in the machine.
3 - Could it be due to reputation? What I mean here is that when the Clan's first released, they were actually OP and were that way for quite some time. When something is like that it develops a reputation and even if things change, that reputation can persist and often people will see believe that nothing has changed.
4 - Could it be that people aren't looking at the tech deep enough? Here is the likely culprit in my opinion. On the surface Clan weapons seem superior. I mean if you just glance at a cER ML you see a weapon that weighs only 1 ton and takes up 1 slot doing 7 damage at a range of 405m and it is
ONLY 2 heat hotter than an IS ML. However that "Only 2 Heat" means that the cER ML has to mount at least 1 additional DHS to sink that additional heat making the cER ML a 2 ton, 3 Slot weapon when compared to an IS ML. When you actually look at things this closely and from this perspective, all of a suddenly that extra damage and range on the cER ML makes sense and the weapon doesn't seem that powerful.
There might even be other reasons why Clan tech is perceived to be more powerful overall, but my point is, it is hard to fix a perception issue and nerfing the popular faction and creating a negative tech balance to make them less popular isn't the solution.
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