176 replies to this topic

[Wayland]

As long as there are clan players still harping on about balance is fine. Get gud, faction play will continue it's death spiral. Honestly, what are you clan players going to do when there's no IS opponents to drop against anymore. Your happy that faction play will be dead again after the event ? Keep stacking clan and being condescending to IS players. Enjoy ur ghost drops.

[TWIAFU]

Helsbane, on 15 October 2017 - 09:48 AM, said:

Had a guy on our team that was straight outta the depths of tier 9 last night. Ran around in his Raven for the first three waves claiming he was 'spotting' and babbling into his mic the entire time. He was still on his first ride while the rest of us got ready for our fourth assault into VF. I admittedly took it upon myself to get that guy into his second mech by whatever means were at my disposal. At match end, there were seven of us over 1500 dmg with 4+ kills, while our 'spotter' did a whopping 59 points of damage total, probably by accident.

As long as scrublets like that are allowed into FW, the results will be the same.

NEVER drop in CW without at least a group of 10.

NEVER.

Let the seals get what they deserve, on both sides.

[Joey Tankblaster]

MischiefSC made a very valid point. IS loyalists are almost extinct. I can only speak for the german community and our own unit, but many IS-loyalists stopped FP and/or broke up, went MERCs etc.

In our unit during Tuk1/2 we could field seven companies, we were heavily engaged in FP, actually a force to reckon with. Nowadays only two companies regularly drop in FP. Interest in this event is low, albeit not zero.

Whenever we had a tool to counter clans (TDR-9S, Stalker-4N, Black Knights, now Grasshoppers) it was nerfed into oblivion.

Additionally it is hard to find new pilots since most of them tend to be Clan-Loyalists or MERCs.

[Keith66AH]

Commander A9, on 15 October 2017 - 06:39 PM, said:

Why Keith? Why should they be 10-12? PGI doesn't care about lore, they only care about profit-they're a business, businesses exist to make money. It won't address the problem of people complaining that 'there's no matchmaker' and 'units farm pugs.' In the end, people will still just keep screaming at unit players and ejecting from mechs the moment the game starts to avoid what they perceive to be as wasting their time.

Given how Clan mechs have been so hideously nerfed to the ground, you'd have to restore Clan mechs to their former performance levels they maintained upon release before PGI even considers the prospect of 10-12.

If no one played the game, but people kept buying mech packs, they'd be perfectly content with that.

It's not the mechs - it's pilot skill. Look no further than the leaderboards. We don't need artificial buffs to one side to 'help anyone win' when pilot skill should decide a win or a loss, hands down.

You know why people complain that 'lore' isn't being followed? Because they want Clans to lose by default as compensation for otherwise losing to Clans on the battlefield.

I had said that the weapons need to be reset and a Vaseline established. I firmly believe that clan mechs and weapons should be better then IS. That is the whole point. IS were fighting with hand me down 500+ year old mechs, scrounging for parts, fighting for resources and whatever manufacturing plants were still around. The clans came swooping in with brand new better weapons and such. It was the tactics and the way the clans fought that ultimately allowed the IS to at least stop the assault and eventually turn the tables. the only advantage the IS had was simple numbers overall.

Why 10v 12? Clans ran in stars IS in lances.. 5 v 4. Sticking to that its easy to get a portion of the balance needed.

Why should clans have less tonnage available? They bid to fight, whoever pledged the least amount to win got to go fight.

Clans fought with an honor system and technically should be fighting one on one until one of the enemy broke that rule. There could be a reward for the clans to fight that way. Yes I know you cant force players to do this sort of thing but reward the ones who try to.

Why would this stuff work? Clan weapons are and should be better then IS. No question. The balance didn't come from that it came from numbers and tactics.

This stuff only applies to FW however and separate rules and such would be needed for pug matches otherwise it would just all be clan mechs there.

And yes the player base has some.... very bad players. Not that they cant shoot or whatnot but they don't want to or refuse to work as a team. They run off and do wht they want or don't like what they see so they suicide and throw the match.

The 66th was #1 for Davion loyalists or quite awhile after HHOD left. Currently 4th. I think 49th overall...We haven't played that much FW since they put it that you can only fight clans. That and our number of players is deceiving. It may say we have 50 or so but in reality we only have at best 10 active players. Usually 5 to 7. So when we do play we have to use the remaining pugs to fill it out. Sometimes we get great ones but usually derps.
When you have to mix with pugs you cannot coordinate mechs and drops and players just take what they want, and not always what works.
We often end up fighting KCOM and EVIL. We have some close matches once in awhile but usually its done before the match starts. A bit more coordination, slightly better pugs and we could have won a few of those matches. KCOM and EVIL are tough as hell to beat but its happened once or twice by us. So yes it is the player more then the mech, but if there is a better system of balance and not just pointless nerfs and mixed bags of quirks.

I quit buying mech packs since most are total garbage to begin with. Uziel anyone? The new patch is going to nerf the nightstar before it even arrives and they are already nerfing the Annihilator...why??? The new quirk system is garbage too.. why even have it if everyone takes the basic same setup anyway?

Reset all the crap to zero and start over! Quit trying to fix a broken system.

[Marquis De Lafayette]

The Nerf Bat, on 15 October 2017 - 10:53 PM, said:

The "Git Gud" mantra kills me.

HHOD is the only I.S. "loyalist" unit in the top 20.

Look at how many of the top "merc" units went Clan Loyalist in the last ~90 days.

I wonder why they didn't go I.S.?
Is it the better mechs?
Is it the better weapons?
It it the better pugs?
Is it the better rewards?
Are they all that afraid of Kcom?
If you can't beat em git gud, join em?




There is no amount of "git gud" for the I.S. that can compensate for how (faction) stacked the (drop) deck is against the I.S.

I absolutely believe that the Clan-side is stacked with most of the elite, good and even ok (ok enough to beat PUGs anyway) units. However, this list doesn't really tell the tale though (as far as reasons go, for what is really going on) for the following reasons.

1. Many units on their are historic Clan loyalists (07, 420) , who just switched to a new faction recently to grind a new reward tree.. Therefore, the days loyal are artificially low. So, it's simply the rewards option you list for many of these units ....and while some of these units have done Merc work, they just have been historically Clan.
2. The top 20 list is only about planet captures and it covers the past couple of seasons. Some of the top 20 units are pretty inactive now (BNB isn't nearly as active as it was a couple of seasons ago, for example), but is on the list. It's hard for even quality IS units to crack the top 20 when the IS can't capture planets,
3. Some of these Clan top 20 units have pretty bad w/l ratios. If you narrowed the list to 3.0 for Clan units most would fall off. Heck, even 2.0 would cut off a bunch of Clan units. Full 12 mans of some of these units aren't scarier than a TS hub, mixed tag group. So, "top 20" Clan loyalist quality is all over the place. For example: I would favor HHOD over quite a few units on this list in a match up and for quite a few others it would be a pretty good match up that could go either way.

I personally believe the way the planetary MC system is done rewards stacking a side....as stalemates get nobody any MC. What to do about it is the question. Throw in new reward trees to grind and it's pretty easy to see why we are where we are. At least imho.

Edited by Marquis De Lafayette, 16 October 2017 - 11:14 AM.

[Helsbane]

Anhydrite, on 15 October 2017 - 10:59 AM, said:

Well, if nobody had LURMS then he was bad. But if the 7 others got 1500 damage due to LURMS then he was successful.

I lasted an entire borieal vault defense match in a Locust PB and contributed a significant amount. I talked on coms and held locks for 2 lurm boats and watched about 15 mechs get melted by LRMs. Do I get any credit for that damage. No. Do those kills count as assist...nope. All I get is shot up by enemy when noticed. We did so good the clans never got to our main base area. Most of them died less then half way between gate and base.

That is how you use a scout.

Before I get yelled at......I realize this Teir 9 guy dropped in a light first on the attack side. That is straight up stupid unless you are a light god. I use my light either 3rd or last on attack.

Had he contributed in a meaningful way, I wouldn't have had any issue with him. But, instead of doing actual scouting work, locking targets and such, he was hiding outside the gates of VF behind rocks 98% of the time, leaving us shorthanded every time we pushed. He wan't a scout, he was a coward.

[MischiefSC]

Wayland, on 16 October 2017 - 02:52 AM, said:

As long as there are clan players still harping on about balance is fine. Get gud, faction play will continue it's death spiral. Honestly, what are you clan players going to do when there's no IS opponents to drop against anymore. Your happy that faction play will be dead again after the event ? Keep stacking clan and being condescending to IS players. Enjoy ur ghost drops.

Except the competent players are not saying balance is fine, they're saying balance needs fixed. Even as they play Clans.

I really, really, REALLY miss balance pre-KDK release and associated IS nerfs. That patch was as tone deaf or worse than the one coming tomorrow and it signaled a huge overall decline and that'll probably happen tomorrow too, or start to I should say.

I miss all the good teams flipping IS and Clan back and forth so there was always teams to play against. Now? Very little motivation to do it, nobody wants to play with the crappy toys and with the incredibly bitter IS pugs.

[Napoleon_Blownapart]

MischiefSC, on 16 October 2017 - 12:35 AM, said:

The IS units that used to still play regularly either quit, fell apart or broke up or are only a fraction of former membership. Many went to merc units.

my team has 50+ players. 4 of us still play

[Nightbird]

MischiefSC, on 16 October 2017 - 08:31 AM, said:

I miss all the good teams flipping IS and Clan back and forth so there was always teams to play against. Now? Very little motivation to do it, nobody wants to play with the crappy toys and with the incredibly bitter IS pugs.

It's because people finished the merc ranks, and the new clan factions guaranteed no one had those ranks yet. It's also because of 'true loyalists' that petitioned PGI for more penalties to breaking loyalty, which keeps units in a faction for longer until they are done with that faction forever. Since those people are mostly IS, I hope they are enjoying the result

[Koshirou]

Keith66AH, on 16 October 2017 - 06:35 AM, said:

I had said that the weapons need to be reset and a Vaseline established. I firmly believe that clan mechs and weapons should be better then IS. That is the whole point. [...]
Why 10v 12? Clans ran in stars IS in lances.. 5 v 4. Sticking to that its easy to get a portion of the balance needed.

None of this is going to happen (and it's been suggested and denied a thousand times already.)

And neither is there ever going to be Clan/IS balance. It does not matter if PGI tries balancing the tech (fat chance!); it does not matter even if they realize what I've been saying for years now and adjust the strategic game system to account for the fact that the setup is asymmetric (even less of a chance); it would not even matter if they implemented your suggestion (as I said, no chance in hell!)

The imbalances in the system have been left to self-reinforce for so long that at this point, that after countless clobberings, lost events and several invasion phases during which the Clans cut through the IS like butter, the IS is clearly the "loser" side and the Clans are the "winner" side. No matter how many 1337 types with a Clan avatar (or at best, a one-week IS stint once in a while) are going to deny it.
The only people who would choose the former over the latter are either clueless 'deer caught in the headlights' types or some sort of roleplayers like yours truly; and of that last group, most - again like myself - have probably given up by now. Which,needless to say, reinforces the trend even more.

At the same time, the player base has stagnated with a slow but steady slide downward, which does not allow PGI to try anything new regarding IS vs IS or Clan vs Clan scenarios since there are barely enough players for the current setup.

Conclusion: Faction play is foxtrotted! Permanently. It will never be fixed. There will never be balance. The only thing to string it along will be rewards for the number increase addicted crowd to crave.
You can only leave an unbalanced system running unattended for so long until it reaches the point where it damages itself beyond repair. For MWO, that point lies in the past.

P.S.: I can only laugh at people like Nightbird who apparently think this long-term, structural failure of the game system was based on recent changes with regard to loyalty and rewards.

Edited by Koshirou, 16 October 2017 - 12:48 PM.

[Commander A9]

If the major teams all went IS, I can guarantee you the bar would be fully orange.

[Tahawus]

Commander A9, on 16 October 2017 - 06:09 PM, said:

If the major teams all went IS, I can guarantee you the bar would be fully orange.

Thanks for sharing the painfully obvious.

But, that's a complete red herring and a diversion from a discussion of the real problems. Putting the majority of the good/organized teams on one side has a vastly larger impact on the game state than the IS/Clan tech imbalances. Nice...problem solved, let's go home and pat ourselves on the back.

Oh, wait, you mean they aren't independent issues? They're clearly correlated? The best teams choose to play the most advantageous mechs? Seems reasonable right up to the point that it clearly is damaging to the game's future. The question, legitimately debatable with regards to solutions, is how to fix balance so that there is a significant level of self-correction that trends towards stable roughly equal rates of success.

I see three ways of doing this.
The hardest is balancing the tech, not that corrections shouldn't be made when warranted.

The next two could work as a dynamic and tunable balancing mechanisms.

1. Increase relative payouts for the side that has been systematically loosing.(with limited endgame content this method had some challenges)
2. Increase relative weights for drop decks to equalize win rates.

Both of these would need to update at a rate slightly faster than mercenary contracts. You might be able to combine both, but that's two sets of variables to manage (even though they'd be strongly correlated).

Sidenote...I'd like to see a series of FP matches between top level teams. Give a strong incentive to win each match, and set it up as a series of 20 games with each team playing IS in half of the game's.

[Gothic Salad]

The IS will never win an event until there is a Major revamp to this game, but sadly the people in charge will rarely listen, they will continue to cater to the small group they deem (their players) thus the game will continue to digress. why not just go ahead and remove the IS altogether and just have it a Clan on Clan game.

[Koshirou]

Commander A9, on 16 October 2017 - 06:09 PM, said:

If the major teams all went IS

Which they won't. That being the point of my post above, which I'm not surprised has sailed miles past your delusion-filled head.

[Koshirou]

Tahawus, on 16 October 2017 - 06:50 PM, said:

I see three ways of doing this.

As I said: At this point, none of this is going to help.

[Koshirou]

Gothic Salad, on 16 October 2017 - 08:47 PM, said:

remove the IS altogether and just have it a Clan on Clan game.

That would be the only sensible solution left. If the top teams in a football league continually pummel a subpar team that somehow ended up in the same league, that latter team would be removed from the competition. It would not be kept in the running with the smug assertion that, well, if all the top players from the other teams joined the subpar team, the situation would surely turn around.

But then again, removing the IS altogether would mean three things:
a.) Admitting to complete and utter failure on PGI's part - not bloody likely.
b.) The remaining IS stalwarts would leave, reducing the player base even further.
c.) Many of the remaining Clan players would quit FP because their punching bags have been taken away. Other, more casual Clan players would quit because for one they can no longer ride the coat tails of the top units to victory against helpless IS opponents and more importantly, they would have to be the new punching bags.

So, that's not happening either. FP is going to continue in its current failed state no matter how many miniscule changes are being announced as complete game changers in the years(?) to come. This state of affairs will end only when PGI no longer makes enough money to run the servers and pay the bills of whoever is left of the staff at the end.

Edited by Koshirou, 17 October 2017 - 01:34 AM.

[TWIAFU]

Commander A9, on 16 October 2017 - 06:09 PM, said:

If the major teams all went IS, I can guarantee you the bar would be fully orange.

Assuming the major teams would willingly give up the easier button...

But they will not do that without being bribed and then just head back Clan after they got the bribe anyways.

[Kin3ticX]

Nah, clans op. Most of the nu-tech is garbo or a novelty. Maybe PGI thought stealth armor was going to make it so they cant even hit the IS mechs or somefin.

[McGoat]

While it wouldn't be a perfect solution, IE: isXL vulnerability, mix-tech could help some. I'm no lore person by any measure, i've only played the games from MW3 on the Zone to this (and read a few books); but in a video game where plenty is only "loosely" correlated to lore (all you lore hounds can be quite.. interesting, only wanting lore when it suits you) advancing the games timeline if FedComCivWar isn't far enough to at least allow mix-tech weaponry would only make things more fun and be more interesting to players. Even in MW4 and Mercs there were still places for standard (IS) lasers..

[Xavori]

And all it took to save Luthien was for the event to be scheduled at a time when no major clan units are on, but several major IS clan units were available to go pugstomping and push the bar just enough to take away the win that the clan had held literally the entire event up to these last couple hours.