84 replies to this topic

[Petroff Northrup]

And on the 8th day the great Kerensky spoke unto the khans and said, "Let there be trials."

[Verminaard]

Sorry for the poor wording/spelling, im rather tired.

Trials should be mandatory, there is really little downside.(it adds background/lore, feeling of accomplishment). Not like there is a penalty for lossing, just try again later. Simply put a cooldown, ex 1 trial attempt per week, if you succed you're a lvl 1 clanner (lose IS rank).

IMO clans should have less members than an I.S. house by far. They are supposed to be the elite few afterall. Being outnumbered will balance them out, and anyone wanting to join will likely get in after a few trials at worst. Seeing as they should be outnumbered on the field of battle (or else it would unfair for their IS opponent) they should at least have some competence ingame.

It would be rather odd having 4 Lances of Davion mechs going against 2 Stars of clanners only to have the davions wipe them out using only 2 lances; before the other 2 arrive to help. Its supposed to feel like acomplishment defeating clanners afterall. Some skill requirement should be needed. I'm sure they're not making it a requirement to be a pro-gamer, just capable of winning a 1v1.

It's not like these trials will be insane, they won't ask you to defeat 5 summoners in your commando... It'd simply (probally) be something like defeat the enemy Nova with your Hunchback. After 3-4 attempts (if not your first) you'd probally manage one win at least. Or an alternative, have 5 I.S. pilots FFA against eachother, last man standing joins a clan.


PS: Can someone inform me why people are against this? With a logical arguement, I can't see a downside.

Edited by Verminaard, 11 January 2012 - 08:57 PM.

[CoffiNail]

Last Man Standing is not a good judgement of skill unless it is monitored and such as one player can just hide in a corner until the rest of the players are dead or nearly dead and then go finish them off. In MWLL the Wolf's Dragoon unit hosted a completion, with 7 deemed good players and a 8th slot for a player who won a last man standing event. The person who won it, waited until everyone else was dead and then finished off the last person. Not very telling in skill. Both in Aidan Pryde and Star Commander Trent (in Exodus Road) during their grand melees were instructed to stay on the outside of the battle until most of the combatants were eliminated.

No, they are trying to stick to lore the best they can, so my guess is you get to pick your weight class you are planning on fighting in and face opponents in equal or more challenging mechs. You pick a shadowcat, well maybe you will fight a skilled nova pilot, a mad dog and then a summoner as your three opponents, 1 vs 1 fighting. Most clans iirc do it in a fashion of the cadet is in a heavy mech, the opponents are in assault mechs. Remember they want to make sure the pilot is damned skilled, he must be to live up to the warrior caste. The opponents are also skilled mechwarriors who have volunteered to be part of the trial of position. It is not a good chance you will secceed , you will succeed if you are as skilled as you should be. I mean a sibko of what 25-50+ members tends to get whittled down to 1-4 remaining cadets, hell some sibkos all test down, though I suppose it is then the sibko trainer who can get blamed at times for that amount of failing.

I think it is mandatory that Clan players be skilled pilots, or they just are not sticking to lore very well. My thoughts is it will be like Star Trek Online where you need to be like tank 25 or something to make a Klingon. I am guessing you will need to be a certain rank to get to be Clan, as you will need to understand the game and be a decent pilot to be one.

[Aaron DeChavilier]

In the spirit of this: I think we should also have trials to join the 1st Sword of Light, Avalon Hussars, and all other 'elite' mechwarrior groups inside the IS as well. The lore says their supposed to be elite, let's make them so
RP, trials, etc should be conducted within player-led leagues or sanctioned leagues - each don't exist for MW:O yet.
I coulda sworn I also heard the devs said everyone has access to most stuff when they first start out.

the quickest way to balance clan player characters that would be actually feasible in terms of game mechanics would be things like honor points -> rank -> equipment selection.
any player-run organization you roll with should definitively make their own recruitment rules and RP, but never should a over arching faction intentionally lock out people, lore be damned.

if clan players want the 'clan advantage' to be accurately represented, then they must shift their expectations towards a reality where players will join for the stat boost, because most gamers are pragmatists, to assume otherwise is to patronizing.

[Stormwolf]

Aaron DeChavilier, on 14 January 2012 - 11:23 PM, said:

In the spirit of this: I think we should also have trials to join the 1st Sword of Light, Avalon Hussars, and all other 'elite' mechwarrior groups inside the IS as well. The lore says their supposed to be elite, let's make them so

I think that those units should become available by having a large amount of loyalty points combined with a good win/loss ratio.

Aaron DeChavilier, on 14 January 2012 - 11:23 PM, said:

RP, trials, etc should be conducted within player-led leagues or sanctioned leagues - each don't exist for MW:O yet.

I'll have to disagree with you here, trials should be ingame.

Aaron DeChavilier, on 14 January 2012 - 11:23 PM, said:

I coulda sworn I also heard the devs said everyone has access to most stuff when they first start out.

I think that it will be divided by faction. The LC won't be fielding any Dragons or Hatamoto-Chi's any time soon.

Aaron DeChavilier, on 14 January 2012 - 11:23 PM, said:

the quickest way to balance clan player characters that would be actually feasible in terms of game mechanics would be things like honor points -> rank -> equipment selection.
any player-run organization you roll with should definitively make their own recruitment rules and RP, but never should a over arching faction intentionally lock out people, lore be damned.

That only worked for previous games, nowadays we have the technology to have actual ingame factions with their specfic flavors.
Although it does help if there is some moderation to report abuse or loopholes that ruin the fun of the IS gamers.

Aaron DeChavilier, on 14 January 2012 - 11:23 PM, said:

if clan players want the 'clan advantage' to be accurately represented, then they must shift their expectations towards a reality where players will join for the stat boost, because most gamers are pragmatists, to assume otherwise is to patronizing.

Come now, I think that are selling most people short here. Getting a base of players together for the Clan feel and gameplay will go a long way. The rewards of honor will go a long way to get the most out of the gameplay. It is like in RPG's, you need to level up to get all the cool stuff. Having both the players and game mechanics will ensure that the game is going to be fun and fairly abuse free.

Edited by Stormwolf, 15 January 2012 - 06:31 AM.

[Ghostrider45]

Ever one seems to frourget no one knew of the clans before they attacked the inner sphere So how are you in a real time game going to have trails for some thing knows about!!!!! second the first TRAIL you get from a Claner is Him shooting at you in Battle if you put up a good enough fight then that Claner can make you a Bons slave an put you in to sibko for training then you have to live trow that training then you may get to fight with the clan!!!!

[Stormwolf]

Ghostrider45, on 15 January 2012 - 07:36 AM, said:

Ever one seems to frourget no one knew of the clans before they attacked the inner sphere So how are you in a real time game going to have trails for some thing knows about!!!!!

Hi there, Clans will be playable some time next year. I don't think that the Clan players will be suffering from amnesia when they enter the IS.

Ghostrider45, on 15 January 2012 - 07:36 AM, said:

second the first TRAIL you get from a Claner is Him shooting at you in Battle if you put up a good enough fight then that Claner can make you a Bons slave an put you in to sibko for training then you have to live trow that training then you may get to fight with the clan!!!!

First off, a trial of possession or grievance is announced before the fighting starts. Individual fights usually have one guy challenging another.
Second, it's taking someone as a bondsman, bondsmen are not slaves.

Not everybody becomes a mechwarrior again once they have become bondsmen, some can enjoy the civilian life in the Clans (they have better forms of medicine and agroculture then the IS).

Edited by Stormwolf, 15 January 2012 - 07:59 AM.

[Aaron DeChavilier]

I meant that ranks are akin to levels in an RPG and I also forgot mention would play into the matchmaker that PGI is most likely going to be putting in. The way I've always seen it is the mechwarrior sim is the means to an end to resolve combat, the RP stuff is left up to the players themselves and the organizations they run. This allows anyone who wants 'blow stuff up' do that and allows the more dedicated players to get their experiences too.

[Jaroth Corbett]

Xavier Truscott, on 08 January 2012 - 05:29 AM, said:

Trials of Entry would apply....had you been cloned and born in a vat on a world far far away from Terra. Unfortunately for most of us, we're just ordinary freeborns on this planet earth. We come here to play a game, we choose a faction, and our actions determine how far we get in that faction.

When you give them enough rope, eventually they will hang themselves. Thank you for those words Xavier, I hope you & those like you read them over very carefully. You CHOOSE a faction. Good. Keep that in mind. As with other games, when you choose a faction, you are told of their pros & cons, their advantages & disadvantages. You CHOOSE these by selecting the faction of your choice.

The Clans are better trained & have better tech but they have constant Trials, they fight honorably using a system called Zellbrigen & they employ a bidding system to use the least number of warriors in an engagement. if you CHOOSE to go with the Clans, be prepared to accept those terms.

I am not asking that the new players dive into the lore, but at the very least get your toes wet. Check out at least the basic background info for the faction you are going to play & represent. I would hope that this would now have the players who are saying "Oh if I go with the Clans my pilot will be more elite & I get better tech? Away I go!", to now stop & very carefully weigh their options as to what they can expect from the faction they choose.

If I had to give players a brief summation of the factions, I would probably give them:

Quote

Inner Sphere

Pilots begin with fair-excellent training.
Pilots begin with access to fair-excellent tech & weapons.
Pilots can field larger numbers in battle against other IS factions or Clans without penalties.
Pilots can "group fire" targets without penalties & can fire at mechs in any state without penalties.
Pilots maintain rank & tech unless promoted, demoted or expelled from the specific unit.

Quote

Clans

Pilots begin with elite training.
Pilots begin with access to elite tech & weapons.
Pilots MUST use bidding system when engaged with other Clan forces. When engaged with IS forces, Clan pilots incur penalties for fighting an IS force smaller in number (providing the weight class is of equal or 1 grade difference). Also when engaged with IS forces Clan pilots MUST use bidding system once the IS forces reply to the batchall. If the IS forces refuse to reply to the batchall, Clan pilots are allowed to use any & all forces at their command with no penalties.
Pilots use Zellbrigen when engaged in combat. Pilots that do not will incur penalties.
Pilots MUST attain a Bloodname to achieve a rank higher than Star Captain.
Pilots hold rank & tech until such time as they are called to Trial. (e.g. A Star Commander can challenge a Star Captain for his rank. If the Star Commander wins, he becomes Star Captain & the Star Captain becomes the Star Commander. This is limited, by the example, to one rank differences, so a mechwarrior cannot challenge a Galaxy Commander for his rank or a Star Commander cannot challenge a Star Colonel etc. In addition to rank, pilots may be able to claim mechs from each other via Trials. This is limited to players of equal rank or one rank higher.)

Edited by Jaroth Winson, 15 January 2012 - 03:41 PM.

[Hangfire]

Trails as part of the Clans in MWO? Sure as long as it effects EVERYONE, that includes those who call themselves Clanners now. Just because you played Clan in an older variation of MW doesn't give you the right to avoid the trials in this game. I'm all for Trials of entry, but for all players attempting to join the Clan faction.

If you mean ToE to join your own particular unit, then that's personal choice and nothing to do with the game mechanic.

[CoffiNail]

With MWLL and MW4 atm, not to hard to be in practice

[Xavier Truscott]

Yeah, i know you missed me here, so a few observations:

MWO is a PVP game, with instanced battles, governed by rules set by the developers who plan on having clan players outnumbered and suffer xp restrictions if they do not follow single combat mantra of the clans.

MWO is a PVP game, with instanced battles, where everyone who joins this year, will be a member of an IS faction or merc unit. Even Lone Wolf players will be playing as IS in these battles.

MWO is a PVP game, meant to attract people who enjoyed the old multiplayer MW games as well as people who would want more then just your generic iteration of CoD, BF, or whatever your current choice of fps game is.

MWO is a PVP game, based on instances where the results of the battle transfer to a map representing planetary control. At no point in any interview, dev blog, or general info post have they stated they were making it an MMORPG where you need to find the Sword of Solomon during the quest "I want to join a cult to have shiny toys" in order to join any particular faction.

When the clans come out, i would imagine that when they are playable by the community, they would be available to everyone in the community, in the same fashion as any other faction.

Clan warriors may have been bred from a vat in order to be the best pilots in the galaxy, but many IS pilots were born in the seat of their family's mech. You know, the one that the lore says has been passed down from generation to generation, with the parent generally passing on their knowledge of that mech to the child that inherits it. To me, it seems, that in this instance, an IS pilot would be much better at using their mech then any clan pilot trained to be a generic warrior.

When the clans first arrived, all the pilots were not 3/4 pilots as opposed to the normal 4/5 pilots. Those things changed when novels and further manuals came along to represent challenge in the mechwarrior rpg version of the game. Yes, the pen and paper version, not the computer game series.

What both these trial threads come down to, is that you want an RPG version of Mechwarrior. I can understand and relate to that, always loved a good RPG. What you don't seem to understand, is that this is not an RPG, and roleplaying should be a choice for you to play out in forums, maybe in battle with your particular unit and group of friends, and in the creation of fan fiction. In order to be successful, all options should be available to all players, the restrictions on clan units being imposed by developer created in game balance, not by picking and choosing who can actually participate in the lore/RPG vision you all seem to have for the clans.

[CoffiNail]

I almost imagine it being possible someone goes through some sort of RPish introduction to the Clan side as a lot of games do, afterwards you are put in to a que where a certain level of ranked warriors can accept the que and trial the new player. Fairly simple, if the Clan side has as many players as it seems it should from all the polls it also should not be too hard to find a player to combat the new guy. As I have said in a few other threads my idea also is speculating the Clans will be a 'opened with paying money or attaining rank yadda yadda, or, because it is a game, a certain sum of cbills. Either way it is showing some level of skill and dedication for the person wanting to be the clans, like certain races/factions in mmos and the like.

Edited by CoffiNail, 15 January 2012 - 12:34 PM.

[The Paleo King]

I am fully in favor of having clan Trials. We have to face it, a lot of noobs will be joining the Clans (if they can) just to snap up all the tech and without any skill. Especially disturbing is how so many of them seem to be picking Clan Ghost Bear. Unless we have trials to decide who can even BE a clan warrior, there will be a mismatch in numbers and a lot of losers with no respect for Zellbrigen getting Clan Tech and just mobbing the IS with numbers - a disgrace to the Clan way.

When MW2 came out, one of the bad points of the game was with how you can start the missions WITHOUT a trial of entry. You have one in "Cadet Training" but that was optional. However this problem was fixed in the Ghost Bear expansion pack, where the very first mission was a trial of entry. You have to demonstrate competence to be given Clan tech.

After that the other remaining issue is who gets Omnimechs/first-line mechs, and who gets second-line/Battlemechs.
Personally I actually like some of the Second-like mechs better. But in either case there should be some way to decide who gets more options in tech based on skill. The bidding aspect is also really big, but seems like it might be hard to work that into the game... At this point it is not altogether clear to me whether the clans will even be playable to begin with.

[Xavier Truscott]

Hate to say it, but until the game has been out for a while, we are all noobs, and all want the best gear, and all have crazy fantasies about being the best of the best. I love the lore, the universe as it is layed out for us, but until they say that this is going to be a MMORPG, my stance still stays at no restrictions for anyone on which faction they belong to.

[Alaskan Viking]

Did we really need another one of these threads?

Buttom line, the Clans will not have super over powered tech like they do in the lore and Table top game, they just won't.

Having one side that has vastly superior weapons works in a table top game where you can assign a value to each unit, making armies with stronger units have fewer units. But you cannot do that in an 8 vs 8 multi player vidoe game trails or no trails, so clan tech will be nerfed like it has been in pretty much every multi player Mechwarrior game that has ever been made. Sorry Clanners, but you will have the same weapons as everyone else. Either Clans will be regular independent factions with tech that is not superior to the IS factions, or the Clan tech will just be high tier stuff avialable to every high level player, reguardless of clan or faction.

Sorry Clanners but you are wasting your breath fantasising about having some kind of elite faction with weapons that are openly over powered.

Edited by Alaskan Viking, 15 January 2012 - 04:45 PM.

[Aaron DeChavilier]

I'm actually all for the clans have the best toys; cause let's see how well they do when these restrictions are placed:

-Low drop numbers = because clan tech gives each player higher weight in the match maker
-Zellbriggen = will hamper the clan players in the first few moments of the battle so I'm all for it
- even if zell is breached and clans can now act how they want; they'll almost never beat 2:1 odds with the opposing
side playing like a real team.

in the end; as Winson said - give them enough rope...

[Choronzon]

Alaskan Viking, on 15 January 2012 - 04:40 PM, said:

But you cannot do that in an 8 vs 8 multi player vidoe game

How do we know that's how it's going to be? Perhaps that's part of the answer right there - who says the numbers have to be even?

[Aaron DeChavilier]

Choronzon, on 17 January 2012 - 03:54 AM, said:

How do we know that's how it's going to be? Perhaps that's part of the answer right there - who says the numbers have to be even?

blind drops, that's who: blind drops means that until you get into the actual battle you have no idea what your enemy is packing.
so it could be 8 v 4....2 assault lances versus 1 recon lance
either cause of blind drops or it would have to be one hell of a matchmaking service
otherwise many many people would just get frustrated and leave - much like I did with WoT
Wargaming's idea of a matchmaker is...odd at best and just downright stupid at worst.

[MarauderDeuce]

Slightly sideline comment but I keep coming across the mention of people wanting to play Clan for the uber-tech.

If they said I had to spend my first month as a bandit hunter armed with only a combat knife and no armour I'd be in the Clans simply to be role-playing a Clan warrior.

After the first month I get a flachette rifle as well as the knife - the following month I get ammo for the rife.

Bring on the game and if I get the chance bring on the Clans! The RP of them is what I want almost as much as I want my mech! The RP for the clans includes trials, in my opinion, if you're RPing a clan warrior. If the players are serious then a means can be found as long as the players play with honour.

And if they're not playing with Clan honour then they can bug.ger [Take that you ***'ing software!] off back to the periphery and join a bandit unit and I'll be hunting them with my knife and unloaded rifle!

Edited by MarauderDeuce, 21 January 2012 - 04:52 AM.