10 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

I've been meaning to write this a while ago, but I had to spend time sifting through smurfy's to make sure what was actually released. Mind you, I did buy a lot of omnipods due to necessity and powercreep, unfortunately.

I'll just break this down into 3 sections, because there is a subset of stuff that makes absolutely no sense... and stuff that makes one want to rage a bit... so let's get to the beef.

This is all related to omnipod quirks... to be clear.


1) A Useless Quirk (there are many, but there's one that I'd like to mention):

Arm Speed isn't something many players look at as a serious feature, even though it's "nice", but honestly not necessary.

The Quickdraw-4G is most notable for having "super speedy arms" in lieu of missing a hardpoint (which is the dumbest trade for a quirk).

It's great for shielding, and the arms on the Quickdraw allow for that favorably. The tweak had like 40% more arm movement speed.

Author Fact Checking Moment:

Apparently the arm movement speed is NOT on the Quickdraw-4G anymore, and is ONLY on the IVFOUR (the Quickdraw hero), due to quirkening (why was it removed for the 4G is anyone's guess). The quirk in question has 35% arm speed (pitch+yaw) on the IVFOUR.

Old reference via smurfy's:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...avy_innersphere

The 4G+IVFOUR used to have 33% arm movement quirks.


Anyways, the point of this quirk is mostly useless unless you use it to shield.

Having that in the omnipod quirks for MOST Clan mechs... particularly ones that have most of weapons in the arms... is actually not that useful.

It's only great if you actually have a shield arm of sorts (MLX-C's Left ECM arm) or the Ice Ferret that tends to need one side to shield with. Virtually most clan mechs need their arms for their firepower (Hellbringer is the most notable exception).

So... the quirk in question is useless unless buffed greatly (so the arms move rapidly) or the arms get a secondary buff in armor or structure (why hasn't the Summoner gotten arm armor buffs ACROSS THE BOARD?)


2) Unquirked Mechs:

I know the new Timberwolf and Stormcrow have gotten the most attention from the negative quirks they got... but... what happened to giving the Direwolf-W quirks?

The Direwolf-B is technically inferior to the Direwolf-W's CT, yet no quirk?

The head omnipod on the Direwolf-S has a structure/armor nerf, but not the Direwolf-W?

The ballistic RT (1E) on the Direwolf-W should gain a quirk over the 2E side torsos on Direwolf-B... but why nothing?

I've come to the conclusion that the Direwolf-W "had forgotten" to be quirked.


A side note:

While the Catapult-A1 and Champion quirks were "fixed" in the patch... the Mech Module slot difference between the two WAS NOT FIXED. The mech module slot on the Standard variant is still GREATER than the Champion version.

This had to be said AGAIN.


3) Powercreep -The Non-Obvious Inconsistent Stuff:

I can tell you I've already acquired omnipods like the Summoner-C's right arm and the Timberwolf-D's left arm and more... but there's powercreep elsewhere...


The Mist Lynx got its own quirk improvements... and well needed. There are sections where they got fairly good armor upgrades.

In the case of the side torsos, they all have gotten at least a 6 point structure increase.

However, there are two exceptions to the rule:

The MLX-B got a 8 point structure increase. This is mindblowingly low, but whatever. It is there... although 2 pts don't seem like a lot considering armor and TTK.

The MLX-D got a 6 point ARMOR bonus. So, in total, the D's side torsos have 12 pts of armor... 4 more over the B's "reinforced torso structure".

Why is that even allowed to happen?


A similar event happens with the legs..

All of them have gotten at least a structure increase of 12 points. Again, there are exceptions:

The MLX-C got a 15 point structure increase. Again, this is only 3 points more than originating quirk, which is paltry, but whatever.

The MLX-D got a 6 point ARMOR bonus. So, in total, the leg will have 18 pts of armor... which is 3 more over the C's "reinforced leg structure".

However, this goes a little beyond known issues with that change..

http://mwomercs.com/...02-02-jul-2014/

Quote

How Fall Damage Triggers:
In order for fall damage to trigger, the following conditions must be true:
The 'Mech has been airborne for 1 second minimum.
The 'Mech has a vertical fall rate of at least 30 ft/s. (9.144 m/s)
How much damage is determined by it's fall velocity and the weight class of the falling 'Mech.
Light 'Mechs = (Internal Structure Health * 1.9) * 0.04
Medium 'Mechs = (Internal Structure Health * 1.9) * 0.03
Heavy 'Mechs = (Internal Structure Health * 1.9) * 0.035
Assault 'Mechs = (Internal Structure Health * 1.9) * 0.04

Some of the values have changed since the originating patch (the thresholds and multipliers, particularly for lights+mediums), but the fundamental design uses the base internal structure of the mech (likely to be influenced by quirks) and use that for the damage dealing calculations when falling.

So, compare the Firestarter and the Raven.

The Raven has increased leg structure, thus in theory would take more damage than a Firestarter... which has no leg quirks.

Feel free to tell me if that's wrong, but I believe this is the case.

Since you have more structure, you should be able to take more damage.

In the case of the Mist Lynx-C leg omnipods... you'll be taking in more damage than the Mist Lynx-D's leg omnipods... which are REINFORCED by an armor bonus.

Ideally, the armor/structure bonus should be frontloaded to armor... as having more internal structure allows your opponent more time/opportunity to strip away the internal weapon. For instance, the Hunchback-4G tends to carry an AC20. With the current system, the bonus armor structure is helpful. If the armor bonus (+18) and internal structure bonus (+12) were flipped, the mech would have its AC20 removed a bit easily, even though it has the same armor bonus.

I hope this is clear enough to express my intention over how these armor/structure quirks work... and it's honestly a hidden powercreep move (assuming you value the armor on the fragile underpowered mech) that is very distressing.

There are certainly other examples, but this type of quirk change is very clear cut and what it aims to achieve.


I'll eventually get around to linking this in the "official quirk thread", but I'm hoping to shed some light on the matter to those that aren't clear on the kinds of omnipod quirks that go on in the game.

[Mcgral18]

I wonder if PMing Mike (or Tina?) about the Catapult issue would fix it faster.

[El Bandito]

Dem MG range quirks doe... ....Summoner-D, much dakka, so fun, wow.

Can't PGI just get rid of MG CoF, at the least?

Edited by El Bandito, 22 April 2015 - 06:23 PM.

[Deathlike]

Mcgral18, on 22 April 2015 - 06:13 PM, said:

I wonder if PMing Mike (or Tina?) about the Catapult issue would fix it faster.

At this point, missing the original point of the complaint (when I spawned the original post/thread) multiple times is... depressing honestly.

I understand that people like skimming my posts, but I did reiterate that specific point. I dunno... perhaps reading is Lostech.

El Bandito, on 22 April 2015 - 06:18 PM, said:

Dem MG range quirks doe... ....Summoner-D, much dakka, so fun, wow.

Can't PGI just get rid of MG CoF, at the least?

I don't think PGI is ever going to remove the COF.

At the very least, reducing the COF would be a godsend.

It's wasted DPS/crits unless you facehug the target.

Edited by Deathlike, 22 April 2015 - 06:30 PM.

[FupDup]

El Bandito, on 22 April 2015 - 06:18 PM, said:

Dem MG range quirks doe... ....Summoner-D, much dakka, so fun, wow.

Can't PGI just get rid of MG CoF, at the least?

MGs use the "spread" code tag that SRMs/LRMs and LBX use (just with a lower value), so a reduced MG spread quirk should in theory be possible because SRMs/LRMs and LBX already have reduced spread quirks.

Edited by FupDup, 22 April 2015 - 06:34 PM.

[Lily from animove]

In my opinion pointless quirks:

-Torso rates on ligh mechs, they already twist fast enough. And same counts for most fats mediums.
-AMS quirks, especially on single AMS mechs.
Yaw rates. I can not think of a situation where I thought: "I wish my torso would twist upwards/downwards faster." (Yaw amount is a far better quirk)
- MG range, with a template, this just makes it horrible inaccurate. it either should also come with less spread, instead of rate of fire, or just be dropped for tighter MG spread.

But most quirks are situational, DO I really neeed 5 more torso twist angle on a mech already able to twist very far? not really.

in my opinion not good quirks:

-any velocity quirks. it makes getting used to a weapon for newbies even harder when it behaves different on different mechs. And also for experienced players it is a very annoying feature.
-energy wepaon cooldown quirks on energyboats. They are either pointless, or create horrible short term dps monsters, depending on how cool the boat runs. Any larger cooldown quirks should only go to mechs having a very few hardpoints. SPD 5V as example.


good quirks:
-Acc/dec,turn rate and reverse speed. They can help mechs to compete with others more mobile by either bad fixed engine sizes or badly chosen max engine sizes. Or simply crappy hitboxes.
-Armor/structure buffs. Helps a lot with bad hitboxes.

[Deathlike]

Lily from animove, on 23 April 2015 - 01:03 AM, said:

In my opinion pointless quirks:

-Torso rates on ligh mechs, they already twist fast enough. And same counts for most fats mediums.

The only mech that is the exception is the Mist Lynx IMO.

[Navid A1]

There is one explanation for useless/strange quirks:

They are random. with little to no testing.... I'd love to see a test on how 1% cooldown on a laser is going to be seen by the server (which ticks at 1/20s).
If they were not random, clan lights could get something for their lack of truedubs.... or inferior variants would have gotten useful quirks.

Clan quirks are there just because the list could be full of green lines implying an impression of a well quirked mech.
come to think of it. they add three lines (for different speeds) just to note a 2% turn rate increase or acceleration increase.

[Alistair Winter]

Deathlike, on 22 April 2015 - 06:30 PM, said:

At this point, missing the original point of the complaint (when I spawned the original post/thread) multiple times is... depressing honestly.
I understand that people like skimming my posts, but I did reiterate that specific point. I dunno... perhaps reading is Lostech.

There's a large group of people who read and enjoy your threads and I mean no offense at all, but like I pointed out a while back, you would really help your own cause by improving your formatting. Your opening posts are usually quite long, and it would just help the readers immensely if you used some headlines for your different sections, used bulletpoints for lists, used bold and cursive letters for certain parts that you want to highlight and, most importantly, divide the whole text into nice, chunky parapgrahs instead of having so many isolated sentences.

Reading isn't Lostech, but people on the internet are always in a hurry, so making posts easier to read also makes it faster to read. And more enjoyable, usually.

Not trying to rain on your parade here, only trying to help your cause. You raise a number of good points in the OP, especially in simple inconsistencies that don't appear to be conscious choices on PGI's part.

[Gas Guzzler]

Alistair Winter, on 23 April 2015 - 04:59 AM, said:

There's a large group of people who read and enjoy your threads and I mean no offense at all, but like I pointed out a while back, you would really help your own cause by improving your formatting. Your opening posts are usually quite long, and it would just help the readers immensely if you used some headlines for your different sections, used bulletpoints for lists, used bold and cursive letters for certain parts that you want to highlight and, most importantly, divide the whole text into nice, chunky parapgrahs instead of having so many isolated sentences.

Reading isn't Lostech, but people on the internet are always in a hurry, so making posts easier to read also makes it faster to read. And more enjoyable, usually.

Not trying to rain on your parade here, only trying to help your cause. You raise a number of good points in the OP, especially in simple inconsistencies that don't appear to be conscious choices on PGI's part.

I think he just likes to sit down and go and get his thoughts out onto the thread right off the bat. He has a lot of thoughts.

[Deathlike]

Alistair Winter, on 23 April 2015 - 04:59 AM, said:

There's a large group of people who read and enjoy your threads and I mean no offense at all, but like I pointed out a while back, you would really help your own cause by improving your formatting. Your opening posts are usually quite long, and it would just help the readers immensely if you used some headlines for your different sections, used bulletpoints for lists, used bold and cursive letters for certain parts that you want to highlight and, most importantly, divide the whole text into nice, chunky parapgrahs instead of having so many isolated sentences.

Reading isn't Lostech, but people on the internet are always in a hurry, so making posts easier to read also makes it faster to read. And more enjoyable, usually.

Not trying to rain on your parade here, only trying to help your cause. You raise a number of good points in the OP, especially in simple inconsistencies that don't appear to be conscious choices on PGI's part.

Would you like to be my editor?

There tends to be a lot on my plate, so I could probably have a summarizing sentence for each paragraph... but I prefer to get into the nitty gritty. We'll see.

Gas Guzzler, on 23 April 2015 - 07:16 AM, said:

I think he just likes to sit down and go and get his thoughts out onto the thread right off the bat. He has a lot of thoughts.