63 replies to this topic

[Duke Nedo]

Yoseful Mallad, on 17 October 2014 - 03:46 AM, said:

People are not being penalized for not taking the intended weapon quirks. It's just more incentive to play that variant a bit closer to its indented nature. Sure some will go full bore and want to take all the buffs but, if you switch out weapons for others you feel more comfortable playing, you still can. You're just not getting a buff for what was intended to be there. BUT... You can still buff your own weapons by adding your own weapon cool down and range modules. So there are still options people.

But you ARE penalized if you don't take the quirk build, not because your favored build gets worse, but because the baseline gets better and you are missing out.

As long as your favored build is the best build, and the quirk build is not the best build, that will be fine. That will bring another build closer to the best build and we get more variation. However, if the quirked set happens to be the best build, then you are definately being further penalized for not building it. There is no denial!

Let's hope it all turn out great when we get to see all quirks. I am guessing that some meh variants will find a purpose, and I am also guessing that chassi with many variants will be fine, you may just have to switch to whatever variant has the right quirk for you.

[totgeboren]

Past, on 16 October 2014 - 06:21 PM, said:

I know you are still capable of equipping anything you want but in my mind ignoring these bonuses it would be like say for example making a back stab type rogue character in an RPG type game and then instead of using daggers for some reason you would use a 2 handed mace. I wouldn't do that in a game like that it would be stupid and i wouldn't want to do that in this game except now i wont have a choice.

The problem is that people are often running their Backstabber with a two-handed mace as it is, because that is what works best. How many K2 with PPCs have you seen lately? I have seen a few Gausscats, who mounts Gauss in hardpoints intended for machineguns, but no K2 using their intended primary weapon. So the system as it is is obviously favouring what is in effect equipping backstabbers with 2-handed maces.

The new system makes no difference to the mace-assassins, but it does provide buffs for daggers-assassins, hopefully making those loadout more appealing (with the aim of making the dagger-assassin on-par with the mace-assassin, and not strictly inferior).

I don't see how making the option of equipping backstabbers with daggers appealing is a bad thing? You can still run around with your 2-handed mace if you want to.

[Alek Ituin]

SuckyJack, on 16 October 2014 - 06:23 PM, said:

What is interesting is that the 4G quirks don't exclusively power the AC20 but also some other builds to a lesser degree. Will have to wait on the Swayback quirks and the like but lower heat and more range might make an LPL based build more attractive than before the quirks.

If the 4P gets 20-25% lowered energy weapon heat, I would be soooooooo happy.

And screw LPL 4P builds, they suffer in comparison to the 4P Laser Scalpel. While I will not divulge the specifics of the Laser Scalpel, I will say that it is both mind-bogglingly powerful and excessively hot when fired.

[Vassago Rain]

Alek Ituin, on 17 October 2014 - 04:04 AM, said:

If the 4P gets 20-25% lowered energy weapon heat, I would be soooooooo happy.

And screw LPL 4P builds, they suffer in comparison to the 4P Laser Scalpel. While I will not divulge the specifics of the Laser Scalpel, I will say that it is both mind-bogglingly powerful and excessively hot when fired.

>secret builds.

Oh, okay.

[Chuanhao]

There needs to be some clarification on whether modules stack on top of the quirk buffs. I would expect it before nov 4th. Hence there is no need to debate too much about it.

There are two groups of players. Fun and Competitive. If you are fun player, I don't think a PPC advantage on the 8Q is going to stop you from trying other energy weapons. If we continue to use the 8Q example, it still suffers from 0 damage below 90 range. Further, no matter how hard you increase cool down time, while heat load has improved as well, you still cannot exactly fire too many salvos before having to "cool down". Fun players should just have fun and not take things too seriously. Taking things too seriously will cause continuous angst each time something changes to the game. Its a game. So dont take it too seriously.

Now Competitive players, or those playing CW will be different. There is an objective and hence everyone is expected to play to the chassis strengths, or find a chassis that suits your playing style. If you don't play to the chassis strengths, you are letting down your team.

So different strokes for different folks. There are still options to buff your favourite weapons with weapon modules, so all is not lost. in fact, there is so much flexibility now.

Now with 2 new mechs coming out for the next 6 months, surely there is something that suits a person's style. If not, just wait.

[Alek Ituin]

Vassago Rain, on 17 October 2014 - 04:08 AM, said:

>secret builds.

Oh, okay.

Hey, it's not my build to tell everybody about.

Works wonders though, Laser Scalpel FTW.

[TexAce]

All those quirks are pure buffs and people still complain. Nothing has been taken away from you. Jeez.

And whoever buys weapon modules has too much cbills on their hands anyway.

Edited by TexAss, 17 October 2014 - 04:25 AM.

[Alek Ituin]

TexAss, on 17 October 2014 - 04:24 AM, said:

All those quirks are pure buffs and people still complain. Nothing has been taken away from you. Jeez.

But... uhhh... It takes away creative freedom...?

>_>

[TexAce]

Alek Ituin, on 17 October 2014 - 04:26 AM, said:

But... uhhh... It takes away creative freedom...?

>_>

No it doesn't. Besides it gives you 3 times more mechs to choose from and not just the 1 or 2 variants which were considered worth taking.

It's the first step towards real role warfare. What we waited for TWO frikkin years. And people still complain.

Edited by TexAss, 17 October 2014 - 04:34 AM.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

You're not being forced, stop being dramatic. All the other builds are still possible and just as effective as always, maybe they even got some buffs too.

[Kushiel]

I like the quirks because it promotes more builds based around the original intent of the 'Mech.

Even if you don't take advantage of ALL of the quirks benefits you still get some of them, for example the extra armour on the hunch for the Hunchback.

Nobody is holding a gun to your head to use what is given though.

[Duke Nedo]

I am really looking forward to the quirks, it will make a big chunk of my mechyard playable again! I am rather neutral about the weapon-specific quirks, some pros (differentiating variants) and some cons (devaluing non-quirked builds).

But, that being said, non-quirked builds are becoming relatively worse. Anyone who says differently lies or doesn't understand.

[Belorion]

Past, on 16 October 2014 - 05:50 PM, said:

Been playing since closed beta and have closely followed development and in my personal opinion trying to force load outs and killing customization is a massive misstep and the worst change that has ever been made.

Not at all... actually its quite possible you will start to see more builds with this kind of customization bonus to some weapons. Bonus are a great way to do this, restricting hard points is a terribad way...

PGI is doing it the right way.

[Lykaon]

Past, on 16 October 2014 - 06:21 PM, said:

I know you are still capable of equipping anything you want but in my mind ignoring these bonuses it would be like say for example making a back stab type rogue character in an RPG type game and then instead of using daggers for some reason you would use a 2 handed mace. I wouldn't do that in a game like that it would be stupid and i wouldn't want to do that in this game except now i wont have a choice.

Don't you think you are being a bit alarmist on this issue?

When you stop an take a good long look at what is happening is there is a potential reversal of the narrowing of the optimization options we currently have by making more builds competative and on a broader range of mech chassis.

As an example,why did we not see Highlander 733cs retaining their AC20s? Nearly every Highlander 733c was a clone of any other with 2 AC5s 2 PPCs.This was because the AC5 and PPC combo was the single most potent choice.So potent in fact we also saw nearly every Victor using this loadout and then there were the Catafract 3Ds that also sported a PPC and AC5 weapon loadout and then there were shadowhawks with PPC and AC loadouts,why? because this was the single most efficent weapon payload available.

The meta narrowed the customization to a very simple formula.

Does the mech have 2+ ballistic hardpoints and 2+ energy hardpoints? if yes go to next question if no discard chassis.

Does the mech have Jumpjets? if yes this is the mech to use if no discard mech chassis as an inferior choice.

At higher Elo brackets and in premade queues we saw the entirety of MWo boiled down to 5 or 6 chassis and 4 or 5 weapon systems.
Victors,Cataphract 3Ds,Shadowhawks and either an ECM light or a firestarter/Jenner. with AC5s,PPCs,Med.Lasers being the weapons in use above all others (and the Med.Lasers were only on the light mechs)

This problem became such an issue that there is a laundry list of nerfs implimented just to keep ballistics + PPC weapon combos in line.

There are so many mech chassis and variants in game now I think you will be hard pressed to find a chassis that does not conform to a common playstyle.

or maybe what you are worried about is you may not be able to have the MWo equivilent of a backstabbing rouge in full plate wielding a holy avenger sword slinging fireballs and casting cure wounds.

[Ph30nix]

Past, on 16 October 2014 - 05:50 PM, said:

Seriously these weapon specific bonuses are way to big to ignore looking at the Hunchback 4G 25% bonus to cool down, Range & Velocity on the AC20 if you ignore that you are missing out greatly and there isn't even a general ballistic weapon buff for any other ballistic weapons that i thought used to be mentioned in the command chair post but no longer appears to be there.

But on top of taking away the choice of how to build our mech now they also time this right after a lot of people would have gone on weapon module buying sprees. So you spent a ton of Cbills on the modules for your mechs to match its weapons and now guess what if you don't use the weapons you are told to you miss out on these large bonuses. So great you have taken away our ability to customize and at the same time wasted millions of Cbills on modules that don't match what you are forcing us to equip.

On top of that rebuilds usually require engine size changes which is another massive Cbill sink I'm sure your aware of all this though and like the idea of MC becoming more necessary to play but i had hoped silly tactics like this had gone with IGP apparently not.

Been playing since closed beta and have closely followed development and in my personal opinion trying to force load outs and killing customization is a massive misstep and the worst change that has ever been made.

Actually if you look at the quirks closer they give boosts in a way that they aren't limiting anything
Hunchie gets a bonus to AC/20 but it also gets the reduced heat and extra range on its energy weapons
So you could take an AC5 and take Large lasers and enjoy longer range with less heat.
How is that limiting builds?

[Bobzilla]

It's another bandaid fix. Will certain mech variants be used more? Maybe, but they will all be built the same if they are used. This won't add any diversity, just more of the same.

I'm willing to bet it will only benefit people who already use builds which fit the quirks and nobody else is going to change for them.

[totgeboren]

Duke Nedo, on 17 October 2014 - 04:51 AM, said:

But, that being said, non-quirked builds are becoming relatively worse. Anyone who says differently lies or doesn't understand.

This is not necessarily true depending on what you mean by 'relative'?
For example, say a hunchie with 2 AC5s has got a power level of 5. Lets call this setup the non-quirked build. The same hunchie with an AC20 has got a powerlevel of 4.
If we give that Hunchie a AC20 specific quirk that raises the power level of the mech by 1 when having an AC20, it does not make non-quirked build any worse. Sure, it makes it worse in relation to the quirked build (going from being 25% better to being equal), but not in relation to other mechs. The Hunchie is still in the same place relative to other mechs, but the loadout you use has less of an impact because the bad/lore loadout got a quirk.

[UnsafePilot]

This is one of those times were you'll need to decide if you enjoy playing with your own build ideas more or less than min/maxing.

If min/maxing is more important then it's probably time to swap your weapons out to what the the quirk boosts and/or swap to a mech that has quirks that boost your preferred weapon.

[Duke Nedo]

totgeboren, on 17 October 2014 - 05:06 AM, said:

This is not necessarily true depending on what you mean by 'relative'?
For example, say a hunchie with 2 AC5s has got a power level of 5. Lets call this setup the non-quirked build. The same hunchie with an AC20 has got a powerlevel of 4.
If we give that Hunchie a AC20 specific quirk that raises the power level of the mech by 1 when having an AC20, it does not make non-quirked build any worse. Sure, it makes it worse in relation to the quirked build (going from being 25% better to being equal), but not in relation to other mechs. The Hunchie is still in the same place relative to other mechs, but the loadout you use has less of an impact because the bad/lore loadout got a quirk.

With relative I mean relative to the average of all other mechs, i.e. some kind of baseline. It doesn't necessarily make that non-quirked build a bad build or even a worse build than the quirked one, but it will be worse than before the other mechs got bonuses (because it will now face boosted "opponents" if you choose to picture it that way). The competition/alternative got better but you are still the same.

Anyways, for chassi with many variants I am sure most people will find their variant with suitable quirks. It may be worse for someone who really enjoys that LBX on his Flame or whatever...

[totgeboren]

Duke Nedo, on 17 October 2014 - 05:16 AM, said:

With relative I mean relative to the average of all other mechs, i.e. some kind of baseline. It doesn't necessarily make that non-quirked build a bad build or even a worse build than the quirked one, but it will be worse than before the other mechs got bonuses (because it will now face boosted "opponents" if you choose to picture it that way). The competition/alternative got better but you are still the same.

Anyways, for chassi with many variants I am sure most people will find their variant with suitable quirks. It may be worse for someone who really enjoys that LBX on his Flame or whatever...

I dunno, for that to be true a substantial segment of your opposition would need to be running around in lore-appropriate mechs, since these are the ones getting buffed.
My personal hunch is that most people converge on fairly similar loadouts as it is because of what works and what does not work in a given mech (AC10 in the arm of CN9-A tend to disappear, and people put more weight on SRMs instead for example). Only if these quirks put lore-mechs at a higher power level than the current 'best' loadout will your own non-quirked mech become worse.
If these new quirks only raise the lore loadout to the same level (or just below) of the current 'best' loadout, your non-quirked mech will not face stiffer opposition than before, only more varied opposition (as the quirked loadouts will be as viable as the non-quirked one).