#MWO #ClanTech Command Chair Update

Banal.

[size=8pt]Edit - Actually, you know something occured to me about this. There is a reason they are making clan shit basically only *slightly* better than IS shit in the actual game itself. You wanna what that reason is? It's because they can't actually foster the actual invasion situation itself - that situation being "outnumbered clansmen trying to duel a bunch of savage zerglings". Which is, as we all know, how it went down. And why the "imbalance" is actually "balanced". Why didn't they do that? Cuz they don't have the fucking numbers to sustain CW in that scenario. Even if they made Clan shit as good as it's supposed to be, and did something like make 10 clansmen vs 12 IS type matches in CW, and even if they went so far as to make clansmen have to fight in a particular way or suffer penalties - the numbers would STILL be fucking skewed. That's the reason they have to do some more convoluted yet predictable shit again with clantech/mech balancing like recycling the hardpoint concept, nerfing the actual numbers/ranges/etc on weps, etc etc..... If they made it legitimately canonical, then there's no way that CW would have any community-driven equilibrium whatsoever. IS would be overwhelmed and, ironically, outnumbered.

[size=8pt]Response to my own Edit - Unless... they charged $240 a pop for players to 'join' the clans... in which case, that'd be a great way to naturally keep them outnumbered and somewhat worthy of having vastly superior tech... this of course means nobody would ever be able to buy a clan mech for c-bills, but perhaps 'salvage' them rarely in CW... dare I see it would be... genius?

 

Did i read MASC?? *reread* ... Damn i did!

Well i find it good that PGI thinks about how to implement Clan-Tech and Balancing Problems. Can't say if the Approaches are practically viable.

 

some quotes from the above..........

.. aiming..
Any number or description can be changed in the future,
probably
"We will be applying this same design philosophy across all Clan weaponry and equipment as it makes its way into the game."
The following will probably be applied to this weapon:
The following will probably be applied to this weapon system:
Possible adjustment to [7] tons.
As with all works in progress, our OmniMech design is subject to change,
"We will be designing and allowing customization of Clan OmniMechs"
"but rather the choices will be set, and determined by the design team, based on the canon configurations for theMech.
"We aim to follow these as closely as possible, but the restrictions may be eased if gameplay and balance require it."
"We’re also looking at "
"how we will be dealing with them as we move ahead."

Tl:dr

well we've had a few Ideas, but not done any real work, but hey, shut up and give us your money.

IMHO - if I were in charge there, I'd have had all of this worked out before announcing anything, these guys are still working with the kickstarter mentality, they are trying to sell us additional stretch goals, while core features have still not been delivered,

 

Sigh. How sad. With Phoenix and Sabre and the Black Friday MC, they're already asking for more money for a delivery date 6 months away? They don't have enough money in reserve that they think this was a good idea before AT LEAST having ui2.0/dx11 done?

As Verb noticed, they don't have shit all for a real vision and firm direction - the Command Chair post could have been hashed out after a 4 hour design/brain-storming meeting. No new content from the programmers besides the things that literally would take a single person a few days of work to accomplish (ie, moving spawn points, adding a timer, changing values in an xml file for dmg/heat/cool down), more general design 'ideas' being shared by the brilliant think-tank management...

I hate to jump on the 'money grab before drastically reducing staff and the servers go on life-support' bandwagon, but what other reasonable conclusion can you draw?

 

What they should have done is focused all of their resources on making the current game with the current mechs and gameplay as good as it can be. Do the hard stuff, release new game modes and whatever this community warfare thing was supposed to be. Make it a true immersive all-out-war experience.

Then two years later when the current game is a smash hit then they can release the clan tech and have it be overpowering as it was intended in the battletech universe. It could even have a good catchy name, say MWO2.

Instead, they are going the path of not doing any real work and only releasing more mechs and weapons. As LT said, these releases are not much more than fiddling with some xml data.

I'm just going to have fun with the game in its current state and pretend its a console/offline game. I'll get bored of it in a month or two and go play something else.

 

No, you know why they did it?

Because no one wants to be the poor sap on the receiving end of a 5 vs. 12 scenario in order to appeal to canon diehards who get off using stupidly-overpowered equipment that was balanced by a lore-written way of fighting against other Mechs. In a game like this, that's simply NOT FUN.

 

Actually this, and Brians insistence that Zelbriggen is how Clans were balanced in Battletech is simply wrong, and misleading. In Battletech Zelbriggen is always optional, and balance is achieved by using the battle value system. In addition a common method of balance that many BT players use is a 2:1 tonnage ratio.

 

There goes clan warfare down shitty nerf road...
It was to be expected. Instead of seeing this as an opportunity to reset all of their ghost heat and Gauss nerfs and come up from scratch with a system that is balancing things out, they apply the same crap to their broken system.
The only Clanner mech I want to drive is the Shadow Cat - but MASC speed and the PGI nerfed version of a Gauss rifle ? I don't see this working. At all.

After this "update from PGI" I've basically written off MWO.

 

I think it is good that they face the challange to balance Clans.

I remind you - Battletech was never ballanced! And Clans VS Inner Sphere was never ballanced at all!

This is necesarry because else we would be all running around in the same mech with the same weapon loadout in no time. It is always a good thing to look at the competitive scene and what they are running to get an idea of the current balancing.

And then the next turn will start again with PGI seeing how the players use and abuse the current mechanics and they do the next step in balancing.

To some this might look like constant nerving of the optimal builds they have worked out.

Yet it is just the successive balancing of the game mechanics to avoid a monoculture where we all play the same mech with the same weapons. While there will be always an optimal build, it is PGI's task to keep the tip of this optimum as wide/broad as possible with all other mechs as close as good as possible.

This process is endless and will adapt to new mechs/weapons/game modes leading to ever finer balancing as it goes. We are still on the very beginning with so much more content on its way.

So think of this as it will save you a lot of nerves when you understand this spiral of development.

 

I mean yeah, always being outnumbered and facing consistently difficult challenges is probably not what the majority of customers interested in a 'clan' way of playing would *truly* want to experience in game 24/7.

But I do think that the reason they are doing a lot of their changes is simply because they aren't able to create a natural situation, in terms of equilibrium of community, that would allow for the majority of players to enjoy being balls-out IS warriors, and then a smaller group playing with the odds stacked against them, attempting to adhere to zellbrigen etc, all the while fighting matches 10v12, and having access to better equipment/mechs. PGI cannot create this type of situation through code because as a result there is no checks in place to funnel and eventually force players to opposing sides. They could try and present it as incentive, going one way or another, but all these things would have to be sooooo fucking air-tight that there is no realistic way that they create that type of game situation and present it as enticing from both sides of the fence to the majority of the community.

It actually gets comical, imaging it all working out organically, when the final layer of 'ethics' (from the community itself) is applied across it and you try and imagine how tons of clan players aren't actually trying to cut corners and basically play dishonorable, quite unlike real clanners simply cuz the stakes are high, its hard, and theres stuff out there to take.

I think it's a reason PGI has announced a grand total of zilch regarding CW cuz they don't want players to start influencing where those potential lines drawn in the community will be, before it even gets going. They want that influence in THEIR hands, cuz they fear what we would do on our own - they think we'd swing the pendulum too far one way and that it wouldn't be coming back.

 

my only complaint is about the streak srm concept.

 

THIS!!
I would much rather they stick to that rule, and restrict clan tech access to regular IS mech until later on.

I like their idea of how ERLLas is balanced, it is closer to an acceptable method. Same goes for the SSRM, though I wonder how that can be balanced at all. The change of LRM cost and things, not much so.

I am not sure about the noncustomizable Clan mech though. We will see I guess.

PS: DHS is the standard on all clan mech, right? Cause if we cannot custoize then it would be a bitch to pilot a mech without DHS, that would make it inferior to IS mech even!
(And shut up if you are one of those lore advocate lowlifes that support SHS.)

 

According to my 3050 technical readout book, all the clan mechs listed there come with DHS, so yes I'd assume so.

also most come with Endo AND FF built in, exceptions being

Vulture, Thor, Man o' war, masakari, gladiator - no endo

Black hawk, Loki, Daishi both standard

though don't expect PGI to stick to the book.

 

Seriously this would not be an issue in the slightest if they used some sort of battle value system. Matches would be balanced despite overpowering tech, and if would fit nicely into CW, as well as giving us a bunch of variety in our matches ( much better than tonnage limits imho ). tbh it's the only way I can think of that you could introduce clan tech and keep it fair without pissing people off.

Think of it this way, we bought the Phoenix pack, and by and large, were disappointed. Sure the shadowhawk is a pile of fun, but the rest were write-offs - imagine the hurt when the omni's appear and they suck - and they are going to, being only able to swap weapons pods is not going to allow any min/maxed builds.

eg Daishi - left arm pod
prime:
2xerLL
2xMPL
A:
1xGauss
b:
2xERPPC
2xMPL

whats so wrong with that verb? - Well thats just 1 pod, you also have RA, LT & RT - you are generally talking about 5 or 6 different weapons groups. Now as a general rule the most weapon groupings you'll see is 3, and thats not considering the fact you might want the option of chain-firing those UAC5 or quadruple AC2's that you Daishi might run.

I can see them building a gauss-style charge up into the clan ERPPC already too......

 

I didn't see it in the post, but does anyone know if you will be able to mount Clan weaponry on IS mechs?

 

If they do then 6x SSRM6 streak cats!

 

I didn't see it in anywhere, but is it possible to maintain both IS Mechs AND Clan Mechs, OR Do we have to sell all our IS stuff (e.g. exchanged to C-Bills) if we ever want to join the Clans? I don't want to sell my Hero-Mechs if i want to drive my Mad Cat!

Questions over questions and the Answer is in the Matrix..

 

Easy balance fix for the various UACs- increase their chances of jamming if you re-fire during cooldown. If you make it an increase based on time left, that works even better- so you can go BOOMBOMBOM and have, say, a 50% chance of jam, or BOOM-BOOM-BOOM and only 20%, or wait until the cooldown's almost done and have UAC-5 levels of chance.