51 replies to this topic

[Bad Pun]

As the topic suggests, since IS mechs will achieve some parity with Clan in that their heavies and assaults will be able to more or less safely gain speed and/or firepower, shouldn't some mobility nerfs to clan mechs be pulled back?

I suggest that we at least try this, it's testing after all.

[Angel of Annihilation]

I say lets wait and see what happens in the live environment for a bit. I think we are going to find that many but not all Clan mechs will be a bit underpowered once the new tech hits because lets be honest here, PGI has been balancing IS mechs around the old tech for a long time now. Also the Clans aren't getting anything that is going to be game changing, not in the slightest while the IS is getting tons of new tech that will greatly improve their performance.

However if you are someone that believes that the Clans currently still have a edge, the new tech should, at the very least, balance out things between IS and Clan tech. Any IS player that says otherwise is knowingly just trying to get one over on PGI and gain a competitive edge.

So lets assume at the moment anyway that the new tech just equalizes the playing field and see what happens for a month or so before we start buffing Clan tech.

[Cy Mitchell]

The engine de-sync affected all Mechs, not just Clan. LFEs are not going to change the things that led to engine de-sync. The new LFEs and weapon systems in the Civil War patch will probably lead to IS Mech seeing some of their quirks reduced or removed eventually but that is about all the changes I expect.

[P10k56]

Poor claners.
90% of stuff better compared to IS but still want more.
Greedy.....

[Angel of Annihilation]

P10k56, on 04 July 2017 - 01:22 PM, said:

Poor claners.
90% of stuff better compared to IS but still want more.
Greedy.....

If only that was true.

[KekistanWillRiseAgain]

Viktor Drake, on 04 July 2017 - 01:51 PM, said:

If only that was true.

Correct, it is more like 99%. IS gets better LRMs and that is the ONLY place that the IS version is superior. It is asinine to even suggest Clan Buffs while XL engines die on 1 ST loss, change "Sides to Die" to 2 for IS & then you can talk about it. Until then just be happy with the lighter smaller weapons/equipment & superior XL engines and stop whining about not being OP enough.

Edited by KekistanWillRiseAgain, 04 July 2017 - 10:28 PM.

[Vladosteron]

There are gonna be some balancing issues with the new Tech going live. I am certain of some IS-quirks disappearing.
Probably slight Armor/Structure loss. especially on Mechs that relied on XL Engines so far. (And will take LFE now)

On the other side most Clanmechs got a lot better with the skilltree... we will see.

[FunkyT]

To be honest, I feel like the boost IS will get from LFE get's somewhat overestimated.

True, it's gonna be a HUGE boost to overall performance. But it's a huge boost compared to cheap STD engines and one-shot-dead IS XL engines.
And LFE still just poses a middle of the road solution in terms of weight savings and speed.
Mechs that relied on STD before will likely get a bit faster and maybe pack some more firepower, probably one more than the other. Mechs that relied on XL before will on the other hand have to sacrifice some of their speed or firepower to achieve the new survivability.
I personally feel like the two mechnisms, that limit IS firepower the most, are still in place and unchanged:
High crit space consumption on IS upgrades and 3 slot DHS.
IS weapons do run cooler, but to not get into toasty territory you're still restricted by the relatively low amount of DHS you can pack compared to the Clans.

Should PGI at some point decide to bring IS upgrades and DHS to the same level as Clan ones, that would probably make IS effectiveness skyrocket and would require immidiate balancing attention in terms of quirks and what not.

But for now, I'd say we wait the last two weeks until Civil War launch and see what happens. It's a big step for closing the gap for IS, but I wouldn't go as far as to fear for Clan viability yet.
Plus, preemptively nerfing quirks because of the possibility of imbalance doesn't really sound like the right thing to do. Let them collect some data on the live servers before taking steps.

Edited by FunkyT, 05 July 2017 - 02:24 AM.

[Wildstreak]

This is not testing first off. 4v4 is horrible. Only 12v12 in Private Matches counts really.

Second, no. Clans still have speed buffs at several weights, they are not "victims."

[davoodoo]

LFE 25% reduction
clan xl 50% reduction.

I wouldnt be so fast to declare is mechs as fast as clans...

[Doctor Dinosaur]

davoodoo, on 05 July 2017 - 03:17 AM, said:

LFE 25% reduction
clan xl 50% reduction.

I wouldnt be so fast to declare is mechs as fast as clans...

And that is not the point: Point is: IS and Clan were "kind of" balanced. Now IS is being buffed in several aspects. They MAY be minor aspects, but there could be some positive feedback loop on those (time will tell), so after the changes come, it is pretty clear that the balance has been thrown of (in favour of IS). It may be emergent that some IS buffs (looking at all those quirks) or some Clan nerfs (looking at FW tonnage restrictions) may have to go.
I don't think PTE is the right place to decide that though. Not enough 12vs12.

[Tyroki]

A lot of the nu-tech is kinda arse right now, but if they finally get it all to a good, worthwhile point, I feel like IS will catch up to clans.
What makes me laugh is how much the clanners fear this.
Clans have been on top since they were released.
It's about time IS was allowed to catch up.

But of course, the clanners want to keep being further ahead.
Clans, clans, clans.
It's always got to be all about the bloody clans.

After what? 2-3 years of clans being on top, I'm glad IS is finally catching up.
Let the clanners sweat for a change.

[ShadeofHades]

From the time they released the Clans, they said they were making balance changes to TT stats in the interest of keeping things *equal*, Tyroki.

I'm certainly not disputing that they had trouble doing that for a long time, but I will point out that having finally gotten the disparity under 10%, it is worth considering that the new tech, which does in large part favor the IS, might warrant looking at the things that they used to achieve that balance.

That said, I think it far more likely we'll see some reduction of structure quirks and energy range quirks long before they consider removing speed & heat nerfs to XL/LFE, which would both probably be more sensible starting points. Not to mention that losing significant chunks of your engine really SHOULD come with penalties (insert YT movie of shooting out a running V8/V10's individual cylinders with an elephant gun here).

[davoodoo]

Doctor Dinosaur, on 05 July 2017 - 04:39 AM, said:

And that is not the point: Point is: IS and Clan were "kind of" balanced. Now IS is being buffed in several aspects. They MAY be minor aspects, but there could be some positive feedback loop on those (time will tell), so after the changes come, it is pretty clear that the balance has been thrown of (in favour of IS). It may be emergent that some IS buffs (looking at all those quirks) or some Clan nerfs (looking at FW tonnage restrictions) may have to go.
I don't think PTE is the right place to decide that though. Not enough 12vs12.

I would argue on kinda balanced parts, even after all those nerfs and buffs clan mechs were still superior.

Light will try to amend that but tonnage benefits for clan still exist, dhs are still 50% bigger.

Sure some mobility quirks can go on mechs which wont use std
Some range quirks can go, though they should still be replaced by -heat quirks as youll simply slap less damage/heat efficient is er lasers.

then all entirely new weapons are pretty lackluster.

Regardless quirks should stay for some very sad mechs like orion.

Edited by davoodoo, 05 July 2017 - 09:24 AM.

[ShadeofHades]

Absolutely. There are definitely outliers on both sides that only enjoy marginal viability by having some measure of additional quirks - compensating for Orion geometry, fixed small engines in a handful of low-tonnage Clan lights, etc.

[Gas Guzzler]

LFE is strictly worse than the cXL, so no, probably not.

I mean, some Clan mechs need some agility back to justify their existence (Timber Wolf) but that has nothing to do with LFE, or Clan-IS balance. Its even a Clan 75 tonner balance debacle.

Edited by Gas Guzzler, 05 July 2017 - 09:27 AM.

[ShadeofHades]

It may be strictly worse than the cXL, but it isn't being compared in a vacuum, either. (At least, I've never driven a cXL into battle with no weapons or mech to carry it, YMMV)

Again, if the tech balance is even close to the 6% difference so often cited, clearly SOMETHING in PGI's balancing efforts has brought the two tech bases close, and there is little reason to think that something as big as LFE offering survival or more tonnage (for XL/STD builds, respectively) might not tip things further - possibly even the other way. I've wondered the same as I've played on the PTS, and it does not seem unreasonable to me to consider a possible need for changes to improve & preserve equality or something close to it.

In the interest of not being labelled a pure Clan apologist, I also recognize that I have nowhere near the data to properly justify any sweeping change to engines, quirks, or weapon ranges for balance reasons as a lone player. I hope Bad Pun's suggestion will be noted, reasonably compared to PGI's data points if it wasn't already under consideration, and either tested or discarded as testing results indicate.

[FunkyT]

The big problem with quirk changes in consideration of the new tech is, that these new weapons and engines don't replace the old stuff.
There will still be regular lasers and XL engines. And there will likely be loadouts that still rely on those items.

Many of the armor and structure quirks were (from what I can tell) made to give those mechs a better fighting chance, that were mostly dependend on XL engines. Giving them some more structure or armor to compensate the sudden death nature of XLs kept them viable.
Now that there will be LFE we'll likely see a lot less XL builds, which would in that aspect justify a reduction in survivability quirks. But LFE still isn't cXL, they are strictly inferior in terms of tonnage saving. And to maintain adequate speed while holding a fair amount of firepower, there will likely still be XL builds.
Just straight up taking away armor and structure quirks because every IS mech now has the possibility to take LFE would simply invalidate XL engines by increasing their handycap. They might as well delete them from the game at that point.
So there is this wierd place between over-buffed LFE mechs with quirks and completely underpowered XL mechs without quirks.
An idea to solve this might be to bind survivability quirks stritcly to XL engines. That way there would be no redundant buffs for decently performing LFE mechs and the more or less necessary buffs for XL mechs. Don't know how they would code that and how you would try to justify that with lore, but it's an idea.
That idea would of course exclude those mechs, that need survivability quirks because of terrible geometry, like the mountain-sized hitboxes of the King Crab and such.

Pretty much the same thing goes for the lasers. There will still be regular lasers. And while IS ER lasers will be the same with strictly better range, they will also cause considerably more heat. There may be loadouts that will prefer regular lasers, simply because they can't afford the additional heatsinks to deal with this extra heat.
So again, while buffing ER laser ranges by quirks is more or less unnecessary, it's still a balancing point for mechs that take regular lasers. Simply removing all laser range quirks would again reduce the viability of regular lasers, to the point where PGI could just remove them from the game.

So while I see the concerns regarding quirks in the new tech, there are (from my view) too many possibilities to just balance the entire game around the thought of "they could use that new tech", while nobody is required to. It's way easier for Clan balancing, since they don't even have regular lasers, and because there is pretty much nothing wrong with Clan XL.

Edited by FunkyT, 05 July 2017 - 10:47 AM.

[Snowbluff]

Nah, I'm a clamber and I think we're fine. The least mobile mechs are the OP ones.

[Luminis]

Personally, I'm against blanket buffs to Clans. I might be wrong here, but the better Clan 'Mechs will be perfectly capable of holding their own post Civil War. Repealing some mobility nerfs and / or buffing chassis that don't overperform anymore is something I can get behind. The Timberwolf is a good example of this: It's arguably still a decent 'Mech as is, but I don't think revoking some of the mobility nerfs it received (or the negative quirks it still retains) is going to put it at the top of the Clan food chain, so to speak.

That's what I'd like see PGI do: Get around to bringing up some of the inferior Clan 'Mechs up to par.

KekistanWillRiseAgain, on 04 July 2017 - 10:26 PM, said:

Correct, it is more like 99%. IS gets better LRMs and that is the ONLY place that the IS version is superior. It is asinine to even suggest Clan Buffs while XL engines die on 1 ST loss, change "Sides to Die" to 2 for IS & then you can talk about it. Until then just be happy with the lighter smaller weapons/equipment & superior XL engines and stop whining about not being OP enough.

I generally agree that Clans still have an advantage over IS 'Mechs at present, but how about you at least acknowledge that duration, heat efficiency, mobility, damage drop-off and, obviously, quirks exist and do, in fact, favour IS 'Mechs?

Plus, regardless of the supposed tech imbalances, there's a good number of Clan 'Mechs that have either been fairly meh or straight up bad for a good while. Mist Lynx, Ice Ferret, Shadow Cat, Summoner, Executioner - you could probably buff all of them a fair bit without risking upsetting balance too much, if at all.

Tyroki, on 05 July 2017 - 04:56 AM, said:

But of course, the clanners want to keep being further ahead.
Clans, clans, clans.
It's always got to be all about the bloody clans.

Just a suggestion, but maybe if we dropped the "us vs. them" attitude and realised that we're talking about 'Mechs in a god damn video game, we might have a rational discussion about this. I swear, I can't get my head around how much some people identify with some imaginary factions.

FunkyT, on 05 July 2017 - 10:44 AM, said:

So there is this wierd place between over-buffed LFE mechs with quirks and completely underpowered XL mechs without quirks.

I'm sorry for taking this bit out of the post to reply to, but I just wanted to point out that 'Mechs - both Clan and IS - are generally balanced around the best possible build. Yes, it's gonna be annoying if PGI goes on to remove range quirks on the grounds of ERs now existing for IS too, especially if you're running a build with regular lasers because you don't want to deal with the heat, but less optimised builds getting swept aside by the broad strokes PGI makes to balance 'Mechs is pretty much normal.

Edited by Luminis, 05 July 2017 - 11:17 AM.