Ed Steele, on 25 December 2017 - 11:24 PM, said:
To say so shows a complete lack of strategy. Plus, Clan Mechs are supposed to be superior in many ways, to say otherwise shows a grave lack of understanding of BATTLETECH and games based on BATTLETECH.
Please let me know when only the top 10 or 20% of players are allowed to take Clan mechs to properly represent the BATTLETECH lore of Clans having superior piloting and gunnery skill.
Also when Clans have almost no control over their loadout and even mechs available, them being assigned based on bidding and their leaders, resulting in them regularly having a bad loadout for the circumstance.
How about players being restricted only to terrible mechs and loadouts until they've proven themselves in 1 v 1.
Saying Clan mechs need to be OP in a FPS PVP game shows a complete lack of understanding how games work and what game balance is.
Laser Kiwi, on 26 December 2017 - 12:36 AM, said:
I think he was the drop caller, wasn't he?
Was he? Wow, that's got to sting.
Kieryn Jerricho, on 25 December 2017 - 04:00 AM, said:
You are incorrect. I have been playing Battletech/Battledroids since 1985. When the clans came out many loved the story line and the technological disparity from a campaign point of view. The introduction of the changes were aimed at the lore and campaign driven games and cannot be used as a comparitive model in competitions. The fact that you had players with their favourite IS houses and their favourite clans shows how both had their appeal. Furthermore, the way the universe grew with the influx of the clans was organic. The formation of the star league was driven by it. The word of blake schism was catalysed by the actions of com star's precentor during the clan war and consequently the entire Jihad timeline and the Republic could be said to stem from it. Also, tournement wise, in Europe I never experienced issues, we would run clan trials and IS gunslinger tourneys without issue and you do not need to include the clan vs is tournement argument because that is a cultural conflict lore driven aspect and no tournement would easily run a campaign unless they were doing the roleplaying session. I believe you will find the majority of battletech players who have played through the introduction of the clans do not have an issue with their inclusion.
Now if we are speaking of the "Dark Ages Farming Mechs" introduction and rewrite of storyline by ppl who did not care for any of the previous history, there you will find many old players supporting the contention that it may have been the biggest and most damaging cluster f.... in the history of this game.
Huh, I played Battletech since the mid-late 80s. I recall when CityTech box set came out so about that same timeframe. There was nothing 'organic' about the evolution of Battletech lore after Clans were released. The original concept was them arriving with the same tech as IS had from the Helm memory core - just having it universal instead of only on some upgrades. The shift to OP tech and the complete destruction of game balance for a PvP environment is what drove the Star League, and the Jihad, to and fix the broken balance to make it actually viable as a PvP game again. Battletech was a PvP wargame. You could also run it as coop PvE with a GM creating a campaign - and many did, but even with that the population declined as PvP was functionally broken. Even the campaigns declined because plot armor is a terrible balancing device.
MWO is a Player vs Player First Person Shooter computer game. It is completely oblivious to try and keep a balance mechanic that was broken for PvP even in tabletop and utterly unplayable as a PvP FPS in MWO. OP Clan tech was bad in tabletop - all the stuff you're talking about in the lore, the cultural stuff, Clans, their behavior, their culture, the invasion, all of that works in lore with balanced tech. All of it. Every bit. Easily. Just have Clan pilots be totally superior and Clan mechs all be Star League era caliber (not even identical, just comparable) tech while IS has worse pilots and mostly pre-Star League tech. Lore is preserved
The only thing that doesn't work is munchkins getting to pretend its them being good at something instead of game balance being broken to make them look better than they are.
The face palming that has to happen when people are literally talking about making the game an abject failure of a PvP FPS to preserve the worst failure of the games lore is mind numbing.
Of course nobody is saying you have to keep strictly to lore about pilot skills, mech restrictions, how about mech customization? Wipe out the mech lab, make it super expensive? Make mechs a ladder with no real balance; lighter mechs almost universally inferior to bigger ones, balanced only by money? How about 1 mech per player since nobody can afford a massive 200-300 mech stable for themselves?
OP Clan tech is a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket compared to all the other Battletech stuff that everyone is perfectly happy to ignore for the sake of making a better game for a PvP FPS - right up until they have to play on a balanced field. At a fundamental level that's what made OP Clan tech so bad; not just that it broke balance but that it gave a certain segment of the game population a free pass to say it's totally appropriate and right that game balance needs broken in their favor. It was bad enough in tabletop, it's atrocious in a PvP FPS.
If someone wants to be OP they need to accomplish it by actually being good at the game. Not by trying to get the game balance broken in their favor.
justcallme A S H, on 26 December 2017 - 02:55 AM, said:
The amount of LRMs on your teams side... Was...
...
Dat unit. Well known on both sides for loving the LRMs. Didn't even need to be EVIL, a pug team could have done the same.
6
