21 replies to this topic

[Lazy Traveller]

I've been playing this game casually for about two years now.

I began on the IS side for the same reason as thousands others: Silly me saw cheaper mechs and went for them.

Then I wanted to try FP, so I grinded for a cheap IS drop-deck and bam! There I was. A casual pug in an invasion match.

What I remember from that period was a lot of IS massacres and a couple of great experiences when we actually coordinated and fought off the enemy.

All in all: I had fun.

But then I began thinking about how to improve myself. How to play different mechs, manage the heat, balance loadout and mostly: coordinate with other players.

I simply wanted to win more and have fun while doing it.

All this while being a casual and irregular gamer - so no group for me.

When the first wave of exitement fell off I realized that my FP matches were mostly losing no matter what I tried.

So I stopped playing them.

I began to enjoy and understand the quirks of solo queue matches with it's timid players and lot's of peek-poking. (and much shorter wait times)

Now, with the current FP event I got excited. FP having almost no wait time? Hell yes!

aaand massacre. Massacre everywhere.
It is clear from the statistics that the clans are roflstomping us.

I've read all the reasons. Better mechs, more experienced pilots, maps being designed for medium-long ranges that still favour the clans...

Ok I get it.

But what can I do about it?

What can I do to not be on the constantly losing side other than farming for a couple of weeks to get mechbays and clan mechs and then join the clans?

And more so: If these FP events with IS vs Clans will continue to reward the winners with free mechs and mechbays, why would I ever choose to be on the IS side?


tl;dr: What can a single IS loyalist without a group do to enjoy FP and get at least 1:1 win-loss ratio?

[Spheroid]

You should switch. The Clans need more pugs in general. The only consideration is that if you have a significant amount of LP with Steiner you will lose some if you break loyalty.

A one man merc unit has no downsides.

Edited by Spheroid, 15 October 2017 - 12:54 PM.

[Nightbird]

To everyone: play both sides. You're only enjoying half the game if you don't. Both sides have different strengths and weaknesses, leading to a different play styles. Current imbalance is more due to player experience than tech imbalance. Clan tech is better, but the gap is smaller than ever.

[Damnedtroll]

Nightbird, on 15 October 2017 - 01:17 PM, said:

To everyone: play both sides. You're only enjoying half the game if you don't. Both sides have different strengths and weaknesses, leading to a different play styles. Current imbalance is more due to player experience than tech imbalance. Clan tech is better, but the gap is smaller than ever.

It's more about big teams population imbalance than anything else... pugs against big team ( who are a lot more clan side) is a loss match 95% of the time. For example, got stomped by two wave of 12 linebacker coordinated gen rush, forget it, you lose.

But pug against pug or big team against big team, it's more or less equal if you don't poke at 1000m with your IS build and go for mid/short range.

Edited by Damnedtroll, 15 October 2017 - 02:44 PM.

[SuperFunkTron]

The only thing I would recommend is for you to play what you like. I have made a separate IS account recently and I can say I regret not having done so sooner. This allows me to play both sides of a conflict without having to worry about contracts or unpredictable population shifts, but it comes at the expense of needing to develop two accounts.

The most important thing I've gained out of having both accounts and playing them both actively is that each side really has it's strengths and as easy as it is to say that clan tech is more powerful, it really comes down to coordination and playing a mech to its strengths. IS mechs are generally geared toward better DPS and clans more toward more damage output in bursts, but when it really comes down to it, both tech trees can be made to fulfill any role you need them to, and will only play as well as the pilot using them. 1000 damage is possible in both various Battlemaster AND Warhawk variants, but you can't play them the same way and expect each to yield those results automatically. Knowing how to play both mechs to their strengths will also teach you how to exploit their weakness and thus improve results against the enemy.

Unfortunately, there is only so much you can do on your own and beyond pulling more for your team, you really are at the mercy of how well your team coordinates and works together. Tech is just style, results are based on players

[Commander A9]

I recommend joining a unit to get the most enjoyable Faction Warfare experience.

[Lazy Traveller]

Well after 4 hours and 7 failed invasion matches I give up. Got a nice first-hand explanation of "IS pug farming".
Gotta go grind for the clan mechs if I wanna have some faction warfare fun.
The thing that spoils it a bit, however, is that I know I will just be on the opposite side of a crooked system.

But well, I can do nothing about it, might as well enjoy it somehow.

Hopefully the MW4 is gonna be better.

[Jun Watarase]

How often were you getitng matched up against large clan groups? I dropped solo for more than 6 hours today and every clan team I was on was a pug one. There were only two matches where i saw a 4 man and a 5 man on the clan side, but they were mediocre and half of them failed to break 1k damage. Its just that IS players on average were so much worse. There's really not much you can do when half the IS team is bringing trial kintaros/stalkers with LRMs to attack on Sulfur Rift :



Trial mechs with LRMs should really be removed entirely. The trial Mauler with UAC5s at least allow new players do something...even if they dont know how to double tap, they can still do some damage. LRMs are way too map dependant for new players, they bring them on every map because they have no idea how LRMs work and then they fire them at walls. I don't even know why the trial mechs have LRM-5s and 10s...I suspect they are a holdover from when boating large numbers of 5s and 10s was actually a good idea due to minimal spread, but now they just generate massive ghost heat and firing 2x LRM-20s would be better.

Had a few games in which the clan team was really bad as well. Bringing LRM supernovas to attack on victric forge, people just standing there looking at enemy mechs 200m away and not shooting, people standing in the middle of chokepoints...while defending on seige mode...but these matches were the minority.

Dropped on Hellebore springs, one IS player asked why clans wins FP all the time. I told him it was bad IS pugs in general. A minute later, a lone Jagermech rushed through a chokepoint by himself and died nearly instantly because he was "pushing". I tried to explain (with another clan player) that pushing doesn't mean running in by yourself. This was his response :



(Ironically, we lost that match because most of the clan team thought it was a good idea to rush through the chokepoints at the IS team for wave 2 when we were defending and threw most of our tonnage away).

Of course there are bad clan players who thinks this way too but it just illustrates the mentality some have. It doesn't help that most of these players do not communicate, ever. You can try to explain things to them but they do not react at all. Saw one new clan player today, he said it was his first time in FP and was asking for advice. That is extremely rare. He will learn much quicker than someone who never talks or reacts at all.

[Leone]

Lazy Traveller, on 15 October 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:

All this while being a casual and irregular gamer - so no group for me.

This, is a fallacy. By simply showing up in a unit's Teamspeak, and asking if they've room, you've proved you're more willing to team up than most pugs they'd be randomly assigned. Few would turn such a mechwarrior unless they'd hit twelve already.

~Leone.

[Jun Watarase]

I just remembered, isnt there a LFG queue in game, in the friend list window? I've seen people using it in faction chat before.

[Xaat Xuun]

Jun Watarase, on 15 October 2017 - 08:12 PM, said:

I just remembered, isnt there a LFG queue in game, in the friend list window? I've seen people using it in faction chat before.

there is, also one could just open the LFG right next to the Friends. at the bottom right of center

Leone, on 15 October 2017 - 07:29 PM, said:

This, is a fallacy. By simply showing up in a unit's Teamspeak, and asking if they've room, you've proved you're more willing to team up than most pugs they'd be randomly assigned. Few would turn such a mechwarrior unless they'd hit twelve already.

~Leone.

^this^

[Wayland]

Honestly just join all the other IS players and don't play faction play. Let the clan players keep ghost dropping until it forces half of the Merc groups to move.

[TWIAFU]

Lazy Traveller, on 15 October 2017 - 05:25 PM, said:

Well after 4 hours and 7 failed invasion matches I give up. Got a nice first-hand explanation of "IS pug farming".
Gotta go grind for the clan mechs if I wanna have some faction warfare fun.
The thing that spoils it a bit, however, is that I know I will just be on the opposite side of a crooked system.

But well, I can do nothing about it, might as well enjoy it somehow.

Hopefully the MW4 is gonna be better.

Don't play CW solo.

[Big MO]

Didn't read the entire email.stream so this may already have been suggested... You don't have to switch. Its perfectly fine to have 2 separate accounts, one for IS and one for clan. That's what I did. Started as IS only, played for a while, then created a clan account also. Getting to see the pros and cons of both sides makes the game more interesting, at least to me.

[metallio]

Yeah, do clans for FW/CW.

I played IS only for a long, long time...still most of my favorite mechs, but you get to go pug vs pug way more often on the clan side which means you get to win more often...and you're always on the winning side for events.

Not happy that it's that way, but it is.

[arcana75]

Lazy Traveller, on 15 October 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:

tl;dr: What can a single IS loyalist without a group do to enjoy FP and get at least 1:1 win-loss ratio?

Answer: Drop the idea of being an IS loyalist (it's meaningless. Roleplay that you're an IS loyalist spy infiltrating the Clans if you need to, or maybe you're a long lost love-child of Kerensky or something), play as Clan in FP, and play IS in QP. Best of both worlds. You can of course play Clan in QP, but you skill up faster fielding a 4-mech drop deck in FP, than slowly spooling QP matches for mechs one by one.

[Wildstreak]

Lazy Traveller, on 15 October 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:

What can I do to not be on the constantly losing side other than farming for a couple of weeks to get mechbays and clan mechs and then join the clans?

And more so: If these FP events with IS vs Clans will continue to reward the winners with free mechs and mechbays, why would I ever choose to be on the IS side?


tl;dr: What can a single IS loyalist without a group do to enjoy FP and get at least 1:1 win-loss ratio?

Having been on both sides, it is the same. Tech is really not the driving factor of FP imbalance, it is part of it but not all.

Heck, just look at non-FP comp and Quick play, plenty of Clan Mechs there.

Look at the list of Mechs considered to be the best including outside FP, lots of Clan.

IS Mechs are not a big reason why people do not have a 1:1 ratio.

[Nevermore088]

Leone, on 15 October 2017 - 07:29 PM, said:

This, is a fallacy. By simply showing up in a unit's Teamspeak, and asking if they've room, you've proved you're more willing to team up than most pugs they'd be randomly assigned. Few would turn such a mechwarrior unless they'd hit twelve already.

~Leone.

This is really, really true. Very few units actually have hard-and-fast requirements on your participation. Even competitive ones have their casual players that only show up once in a blue moon.

[Lazy Traveller]

Thanks guys.
Now that I cooled off my frustration (and with a 4 mil and a mech bay) I will go for the clan side.I tried some clan trial mechs and they do have quite an appeal.

To sum up what I gathered:

Many IS mechs are fun to play, but don't go into CW as a pug with them.
Not because clans mechs might be slightly better but because of people like me two years ago: excited to fight but just barely able to fill a dropdeck and with no experience.

As a pug, you wanna play against pugs in CW. And there is much less groups in IS, thus playing for clan means lower chance of having a group against you.

Clan style is more alpha-peek oriented and that fits well with timid pug play of limited pushes and med/long range shootouts.

Also: clans simply win much, much more often. That means more won events and more cbills, so the higher clan tech price is not an issue.

If you are not a role-player, don't be a loyalist. Be a mercenary. It gives you much more freedom with few disadvantages.

And of course the obvious: this team-based game is more enjoyable by joining a team, even if just as a sporadic visitor.
Apparently there are many low entry bar groups for irregular casuals like me.

It is unfortunate for the IS, but I alone can do nothing about it.
If I want to enjoy this game, this is what I should be doing.


Once again, thanks for the info and see you on the battlefields!

Edited by Lazy Traveller, 18 October 2017 - 12:18 AM.

[Husker Dude]

Clan tech price is actually not an issue because properly built IS mechs will end up costing the same as a Clan mech.
You get the option to not spend on the upgrades to DHS and endo steel and a proper engine, but that puts the mech at a huge disadvantage against others who paid the cost up front.

I hope you enjoy Clan side, there are definitely some other benefits to survival in Clan tech, and a relative uniformity to the speed of Clan mechs (which has diminished some since the skill tree and proliferation of non-omnipod mechs with changeable engines). It's possibly a bit understated, but when all of the Clan heavies moved the same 82 kph, it was a lot easier for the entire team to stick together, as opposed to an IS team where mechs had speeds from anywhere in the 60's to the 80's.