79 replies to this topic

[Bebo]

Why Clan Players Won't Work....or be too complex.


Attention, Freebirths

Seeing as MWO attempts to stick to cannon and chronology, players being able to play as the Clans would throw a serious wrench into things.

1) Only 25 players may have a certain bloodname at a time. These name rules go hand in hand with having faction names being unusable by players.

2) Clan on clan fighting would have to follow the clan rules of Zellbrigen. Players who violate these rules would suffer recieve serious punishment.

3) Clan trials of combat would be the only way to advance through the clan ranks.

4) Clanners do not speak using contractions and have their own dialect which (i assume) few new MWO players would understand.

5) Because MWO devs will be keeping certain planets from being player controled in order to advance the timeline according to cannon, having player controled clans occupying planets in clan versus IS and clan on clan fighting would become very complex.

6) Clan alliances, friendships, and rivalries are convolluted at best and this could cause certain clan alliances to be unbalanced in power in the actual game.

7) Clanners do not use their mechs in physical attacks unless all other possibilites for continuing combat are gone.

8) Clan tech and omnimechs would be superior to all IS tech.

9) When fighting the IS, the clans might not always follow Zellbrigen but still maintain a certain set of tactics which MWO players might fail to adhere to.

As much as I would like to play a Clanner I think implementing clan players may be more trouble than it is worth. Lets just hope we can salvage their awesome clan mechs. Anyone who still thinks Clans would work in this game is a stravag, quiaff?

[Sug]

The dev's would pretty much have to hire and train people to act like clanners. Otherwise you'd get a small group of players that would just steamroll everyone.

[Kenyon Burguess]

all you had to list is #8.

[Lorcan Lladd]

You sound like you're under the impression that everything with regards to the Clans must follow canon strictly.
I'm pretty sure that's not true; if they're implemented, either as players or bots, the developers will definitely make some adjustments to balance them.

Edit to clarity.
What I meant to say is, Clan tech will probably be portrayed on MechWarrior Online in the very same manner that MechWarrior 4 did it; it will remain superior overall, but not nearly so as it was in tabletop or as canon suggests that it is, for one thing.

The next thing being Zellbringen, Bloodnames, bidding and Trials; I can see the latest being implemented as missions or contracts for Clan players, but that's about it, the rest aren't likely to be, seriously.

Edited by Lorcan Lladd, 15 February 2012 - 08:27 AM.

[MilitantMonk]

Neg. Clans would work just fine. I've posted this in similar topics about their implementation but here it is again:

Clans have less numbers to work with so if the standard IS vs IS fight is 12v12 company level action then Clans vs IS would be 10v12 to represent this and fits with the binary vs company organization.

Make their repairs and weapon purchases cost more. This is in the lore. This would partly balance the weaponry power issues.

Give them all members of the Clan forces an xp bonus for each unassisted kill their team has. This encourages zellbrigen while also being a catch up mechanic for the Clan players.

Don't sweat the small stuff. Players using contractions and not role playing properly is their business not yours. The Role Playing Police would already be after you for the title of your post.

The Clans don't always do special Trials of Position for each sibko. Too many people read Jade Falcon trilogy like it's the be-all-end-all of Clan society. It's one Clan's pre-invasion recruitment strategy and not a complete one at that. Plenty of clans (including the post-invasion Falcons) bring the recruits along on missions as active units in their force. How well they do during the mission will serve as their Trial of Postion.

Since the Clan players might not have access to Solaris VII they could do the Trials as a Clan equavalent for those wanting to do some 1v1 and other types of instant action missions.

Edited by MilitantMonk, 15 February 2012 - 08:27 AM.

[Bluey]

It takes one medium lance to take down a Timber Wolf cant imagine a lance of clanners could do.
But you know Clans have limited numbers a faction based team could out man them in the end.

[Storm McIntyre]

Geist Null, on 15 February 2012 - 08:05 AM, said:

all you had to list is #8.

Totally agreed.

[Kaemon]

1. Not really they can change this if they want
2. limit to Clan Vs. IS warfare for the start (you can use a modified Solaris mode for Clan vs. Clan if need be)
3. I'm sure the Honor Points will replace this or you'll advance based on your fighting stats
4. RP doesn't hold up in an online game, some will, some won't.
5. They would control it the same way they control IS
6. Correct, it's advanced gameplay, some of us want this type of complexity
7. That will have to change, they have alluded to other types of ships in the ISN news feeds.
8. so against 4 lances of IS mechs, what's a fair number of Clan mechs? 4? then they'll limit it to 4.
9. Once again, you're using RP to dictate gameplay, that's not going to work in an online game.

Because of the structure of this game, some things are going to change, and while I'm not pro or con player controlled Clans (I'm not even looking that far yet to be honest, let's get a good clean release done, then we can worry about Clans), some things are going to be changed, and some of those changes will be fairly substantial.

[Razed]

Bebo all your arguments would be valid if MWO was trying to be a detailed reenactment of a sci-fi future, like Colonial Williamsburg but in the future. However I think the Devs are trying to make a fun game, so the Clanners will either have to be players or bots and it would be more fun if they're players. These players would no more "have" to follow clan combat doctrine than House Steiner players "have" to follow Lyran Commonwealth doctrine. Nor do players have to talk like clanners or understand clan jargon. As far as clan tech being superior to IS tech and clan players thus trouncing IS players, correct me if I'm wrong but the clans pretty much did trounce the IS for a long time.

[Sug]

What is Lyran Commonwealth doctrine?

[Bluey]

Sug, on 15 February 2012 - 08:38 AM, said:

What is Lyran Commonwealth doctrine?

THIS

[Razed]

Get in a giant 'Mech and stomp things...or more specifically I don't know, what's House Marik combat doctrine? That's my point, just because we're more familiar with clan doctrine doesn't mean players would have to live and die by thier code.

[Bluey]

House Marik doctorine
Get what ever you can find, throw them into field
Tanks,trucks,fighter jets and artilary pieces lol

Edited by Bluey, 15 February 2012 - 08:51 AM.

[Kodiak Jorgensson]

1. thats just being **** to tell players what the can or can't call them self's

2. thats there problem for not following the rules of engagement, less rewards for them

3. new game mechanic.

4. ok, but that doesnt mean clan players should follow it.

5. not really, the lowest bid for a contract wins said contract. same mechanic will be applied to the clans but with clan names and terms.

6. as keamon stated.

7.neither will the I.S until there's a possability of implementing it in game.

8. there's been a million topcis on this already, Omni Mechs cheap to repair. but incredibly expenssive
Atlas. (100T)Battlmech 9,626,000 Million C-bills.
Executioner (95T)Omni Mech 35,713,073 Million C-bills.

if the Devs follow omnimech rules, which i cant see why they wouldmt, then there going to be limited in cutomization, no armour, engine or structual changes.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/OmniMech

9. thats up to the players and the commander what tactics they use.

[Jaroth Corbett]

Why people should read the lore..............or risk making foolish posts.

Bebo, on 15 February 2012 - 07:59 AM, said:

Why Clan Players Won't Work....or be too complex.

Attention, Freebirths

Seeing as MWO attempts to stick to cannon and chronology, players being able to play as the Clans would throw a serious wrench into things.

1) Only 25 players may have a certain bloodname at a time. These name rules go hand in hand with having faction names being unusable by players.

There is not one Bloodname per clan. There are on average 40. I address the issue of Bloodnames here:

http://mwomercs.com/...6241#entry96241

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2) Clan on clan fighting would have to follow the clan rules of Zellbrigen. Players who violate these rules would suffer recieve serious punishment.

We Clan players accept both the advantages & the disadvantages of that faction. This will only affect Clan players anyway (if the devs implement that sort of system). IS players can carry on with their merry lives.

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3) Clan trials of combat would be the only way to advance through the clan ranks.

Again this is something we accept. If you do not want to have constant Trials & wish to be promoted by time served, bribery or nepotism feel free to stay IS.

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4) Clanners do not speak using contractions and have their own dialect which (i assume) few new MWO players would understand.

Which is why reading up on the lore would help. Besides most of the language we use is standard English but instead of saying isn't we say is not & instead of saying can't we say cannot. I think people will be able to follow along. This would add to the overall feel though. The Clans are an "alien" race so this is how it was in the IS. This is evident in the very first episode of the Battletech 1st Somerset Strikers Animated Series. The exchange between Commander Andrew Steiner & Star Colonel Nicolai Malthus shows that there would be obvious communication problems early on but after some time, what Clansmen are saying will be easily understandable. However you have the option (that the people of the IS did not have) to research the Clans regarding their language & terminology.

http://ppc.warhawken...s/glossary.html

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5) Because MWO devs will be keeping certain planets from being player controled in order to advance the timeline according to cannon, having player controled clans occupying planets in clan versus IS and clan on clan fighting would become very complex.

I fail to see how. Please elaborate.

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6) Clan alliances, friendships, and rivalries are convolluted at best and this could cause certain clan alliances to be unbalanced in power in the actual game.

Oh you mean when the Federated Suns & the Lyran Commonwealth joined forces causing the DC, the LC & the FWL to either **** themselves or rupture a blood vessel with rage?

Clan alliances are fragile at best & besides whether there is a contract or not bidding reduces the number of troops anyway.

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7) Clanners do not use their mechs in physical attacks unless all other possibilites for continuing combat are gone.

First off it is frowned upon unless you have no other projectile weapons to use. But even it were not the case, SO WHAT? You have all this ordinance at your disposal; PPCs, LRMs, SRMs, Gauss Rifles, UACs etc. & your gripe is if you play as the Clans you cannot walk up to another mech & punch it? Get serious.

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8) Clan tech and omnimechs would be superior to all IS tech.

This is like StarCraft. The Clans are the Protoss:

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The Protoss are a race of humanoids in the StarCraft series. They are composed of two societies, the conservative Khalai Protoss and the exiled dark templar. The Protoss are depicted as a physically strong species with access to advanced psionic abilities. The Protoss are considered the most technologically advanced race of the series....

Cannot get a better similarity to the Clans than that. Technologically superior (OmniMechs, Elemetals etc.), physically strong (trueborns), two societies (Crusader & Warden).

The IS are like the Terrans:

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The Terrans are a fictional future version of humanity in the StarCraft series. The Terrans are the most splintered of the StarCraft species, consisting of multiple factions that not only fight the other races but each other as well. The Terrans are shown to be the most fragmented of the races in StarCraft, with multiple factions all vying for dominance over each other. Numerous factions are used throughout the series, ranging from national governments and corporations to rebels and criminals, although only four factions exhibit any major influence on the overall story arc.

Again right on the nose (even the name ). Each Great House trying to overpower the others.

The game will be balanced out.

As I said before you CHOOSE the faction you want & accept BOTH the advantages & disadvantages they bring. The Clans bring better tech but will have limited numbers & combat restrictions. The IS will have inferior tech but will field more troops & have hardly or no restrictions in combat.

Edited by Jaroth Winson, 15 February 2012 - 09:08 AM.

[Jaroth Corbett]

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9) When fighting the IS, the clans might not always follow Zellbrigen but still maintain a certain set of tactics which MWO players might fail to adhere to.

That is going to be up to the devs to reward or punish players who do or do not follow whatever guidelines they have in place for your faction. Besides that players need to learn to adapt. This is war.

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“Water shapes it course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain.”

- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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As much as I would like to play a Clanner I think implementing clan players may be more trouble than it is worth. Lets just hope we can salvage their awesome clan mechs. Anyone who still thinks Clans would work in this game is a stravag, quiaff?

I just refuted your points. The only stravag here is you surat.

Sorry devs, my reply could not fit in one post apparently.

Edited by Jaroth Winson, 15 February 2012 - 09:11 AM.

[IceSerpent]

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1) Only 25 players may have a certain bloodname at a time. These name rules go hand in hand with having faction names being unusable by players.

This is an arbitrary number and can be changed to "over 9000 players" without any consequences (except that it would be diferent from canon), as there's absolutely nothing that hinges on that number.

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2) Clan on clan fighting would have to follow the clan rules of Zellbrigen. Players who violate these rules would suffer recieve serious punishment.

Not quite - some clans always follow zellbrigen and some only use it under certain circumstances. Besides, from a game-mechanics point of view, dropping zellbrigen alltogether won't harm anything (again, except for it being a bit different from canon).

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3) Clan trials of combat would be the only way to advance through the clan ranks.

This can be modelled as "ranks come from xp, xp comes from combat - ranks are determined by combat", but you raise a good point here - ranks in terms of "guild ranks" should be determined by trials for the clans (imho) and it would be awesome if devs created an instanced battlefield (or set of such battlefields) for that purpose. Sort of like a training ground where people can jump into an instance and use it for either testing stuff, practicing stuff, or clan trials.

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4) Clanners do not speak using contractions and have their own dialect which (i assume) few new MWO players would understand.

Not really a problem - it's not a dialect, just a few words that are exclusive to clans. You can easily get by with just plain english. Plus, new players will pick that lingo very quickly if they join an established clan unit.

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5) Because MWO devs will be keeping certain planets from being player controled in order to advance the timeline according to cannon, having player controled clans occupying planets in clan versus IS and clan on clan fighting would become very complex.

It might be, we don't really know that much about meta-game yet. Although, I think it's more along the lines of you not being able to attack Luthien until the right time (for example) than not being able to attack anyhting at all.

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6) Clan alliances, friendships, and rivalries are convolluted at best and this could cause certain clan alliances to be unbalanced in power in the actual game.

Same goes for IS, but I doubt that canon alliances would have much bearing on in-game alliances.

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7) Clanners do not use their mechs in physical attacks unless all other possibilites for continuing combat are gone.

Physical combat is not in game (at least not yet and I hope it never makes it in, to be honest), so it's a moot point.

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8) Clan tech and omnimechs would be superior to all IS tech.

This can be balanced by numbers (clan binary vs. IS company) and clan tech doesn't really have to be THAT superior. For example in NBT-HC a fight between Stormcrow and Bushwacker was pretty much a coin flip.

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9) When fighting the IS, the clans might not always follow Zellbrigen but still maintain a certain set of tactics which MWO players might fail to adhere to.

There's no "certain set of tactics" there, i.e. Jade Falcons and Wolves use somewhat different tactics. Again, players failing to adhere to canon shouldn't break game mechanics. At least I don't see how it would.

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As much as I would like to play a Clanner I think implementing clan players may be more trouble than it is worth. Lets just hope we can salvage their awesome clan mechs. Anyone who still thinks Clans would work in this game is a stravag, quiaff?

Neg. Clans would be very easy to implement - just make sure their tech is slightly superior (as opposed to being overwhelmingly superior). The only difficulty would be in creating all those new mech models.

[CeeKay Boques]

Clan players will not work because there is a Labor Caste for that stuff. I busy doing mental gymnastics and real gymnastics. You need work done, talk to a techie.

[Karyudo ds]

Hmm I thought cland either didn't use cbills or used them differently somehow. Been awhile since I've read Jade Phoenix.


Bloodnames don't really need to be awarded in a game like this, though they could tweak some of the fiction to let this game support it. The unusual combat the clans do that you mention are an issue though? You just give players game types based on faction so I don't see that as Any kind of issue.

Dialects? Just put some of it in text. This is a video game so I wouldn't expect casual players to ever use it though.

Though I thought they wanted to make Clan mechs pretty badass in MWO. I think that would be great, you could have 5v12 games if needed to balance... I'd play on the team of 5. Melee combat...we don't have confirmed yet. Not sure I would count it but for Clan players you'd just disable the opinion

However while I find some of the logic silly/flawed I do agree that Clan players don't interest me much. I mean they were the big bad invaders that brought the succession wars to an end...if you have people playing them they won't feel like invaders to me. Though if you have the option to play them you'll have the option to not play them too. So now worries. If I don't like it I won't try it. Rather like the houses anyway.

[Sirius]

Is THAT why I always played Protoss given the choice?

Anyway - I suspect that when the Clans show up they'll be equivalent to the IS and won't enforce "how to play" rules on people. It's not the ideal system, but it spares the greatest amount of whining.