I was wondering recently how PGI could do mock a CW before CW comes out to test. I think I have an interesting idea. This would be a challenge. They would first need to restrict it to IS vs Clan for anywhere from a day to a weekend with the challenge being controlling the most ground at the end of the challenge. If possible, they should make it opt in and if you don't the qua's operate like normal. I think they should also limit it to group play because CW will be a competitive group event. Than they would divide the day(s) into hours. Each hour would represent a planet and whichever side, Clan or IS, had the most victories in that hour would gain control of that planet. The website would keep tract of and tell the player what planet was being fought over, how much control their faction had over the planet during the current hour, and what the score is overall. It would be a bit generic because the maps would probably have to be the normal random maps and so not represent the planets being fought over. Tell me if this idea is batty, but I would opt in just to help the IS win. As a reward, any player who opted in and was on the winning side during that hour would get a free hour of premium. They could also give a cockpit item to the players who opted in and played, something along the lines of I participated in the front lines at the start of the invasion.
My main concern is that IS and clan are still not balanced. I don't give a flying f*ck about the TT / Lore in this regard. PGI has to do another IS vs Clan run with a modified match maker, and if the outcome is not 50/50 over a good sample of games then they really need to think this over - who wants to play weaker mechs and lose more often than not? Apart from that I don't think the suggested trial run would yield much viable information but it is so much better than the last "challenges" they came up with! So I'm with you here. That would be fun
I didn't do the last two challenges, because I thought they were pretty pointless, which is probably what got me thinking about this. I am sure the Clans would win this, but I like the idea of fighting desperately on the wrong side of a one aided fight. There's something noble about it even though it is just a game. I think a lot of players would rage quit until it was over and some would take it as a personal grim challenge. Those large competitive groups and some smaller units would refine their tactics. It would be good practice before the real CW commeth. Just to go crazy, they should do it for a week.
With the combined nerf to all things Clan the last few months, and the huge boost IS got from quirks, I would absolutely give IS the advantage right now in terms of balance. I also recall saying something a couple months back about how PGI was going to nerf Clans, then do something like 10v8 or IS boosts that would completely fuck up clantech I hate when I'm right.
IS is better than clans now? LOL. The numbers we threw out after the quirks first dropped don't lie. Clan still has the advantage in dps, alpha, and range. That doesn't even account for the fact they can lose half their mech and still laugh at you. Things are better now, and some IS mechs might even be equal to some clan mechs, but overall it is still not balanced.
That's what my retort was going to be. I think some quirked IS mechs equal the clans now, but overall IS still isn't equal.
The "Friends and Family" testing is their greatest method... Hrm... I'd really like to see more PUG testing instead of SOLELY relying on F&F and Test Servers. Neither of those are an accurate sample of the game unless you're only going for hardcore player's satisfaction. Most day to day people are not included in the samples... However, I do agree, the idea of running a patch on a Thursday and running it through a weekend, resetting on Tuesday to work out balance seems like a very realistic and doable arrangement for honest feedback and data-gathering. Much better than the current system. I would also like to see much more Dev participation required in these sample environments. They should require their entire team to go into the game for hours every day during sampling to actually see what the real experience is... I know most of the team plays, but, I really see this as more of a job/hobby for them instead of working on the game they love. If they were as into as the people who pay them (us) they would been seen much more often... Just my 2ยข. Chatt.
Speaking generally though, if people are taking large teams into CW (which they've implied will be the best way to do it), they are going to take their best, most competitive mechs for the job. You won't see as many junk mechs, but you'll see a lot of the best of the new crop of metas that are tearing it up right now. You'll see a lot fewer Locust builds in favor of Jenner/Ember/3L/5D builds, plenty of SHDs, DRG-1N's, Awesomes, etc. The idea of piloting most of my clan mechs against a competitive team that's set up around pinpoint metas like that strikes me as one that's going to show some poor balance overall. I could be wrong, naturally, but that's the impression I get for now.
The nice thing about drop ship mode is the tonnage limit per player. Due to this, we might actually see a very diverse range of mechs out there. Granted, there will be a lot of min-maxxers out there that will run highly optimized ships with the meta builds but I'd be shocked if these players were even a plurality out there.
Highly debateable. 2 TBR and 2 SCR for the clan.... 4 x something like this for IS: https://www.mechspecs.com/threads/dgn-1n-shenron-1x-erllas-2x-ac5-xl300.7561/page-2#post-57031 Yes IS have a bucket load of great mechs now. I have very little fear of clan mechs now and most are junk. As you say... numbers don't lie.... (of course 99% of quoted numbers are politics or cherry picked)
