10 replies to this topic

[Xiomburg]

The idea behind the quirk system is admirable, but flawed. You have a system in place that makes it very difficult for new players. Then your quirks don’t reflect a lot of the time, the stock ‘Mech load outs, making it more difficult for your customers. I feel as though this was rushed into the game, to solve some basic supposed flaw with underused ‘Mechs.

I understand you went to the highly competitive players and received feedback from them; this maybe reflects one to two percent of your player/customer base. So, it appears that you went to the island to get feedback from a bunch of people most of your player/customer base does not, or does not want to, play against. The Quirk system is for these people and not your average player. I think that they are taking advantage of PGI, making them make poor choices based on what “they” want, or to further alienate their base consumer.

While I understand that PGI supposedly went to them, I still think that they got extremely bad advice from elitists and have been completely jerked around.

While I understand your trying to balance the game, I personally think you are going about this the wrong way. You want to increase the use on ‘Mechs that these 1%ers do not use, in hopes that the 99% will. I do not see how this makes any sense, and is a poor attempt at balance. You also want to further balance your IS technology against the clans.

Specializing this ‘Mech this much, based on how much they are used, due to poor availability of the load outs, size, and player use is wrong. Also, you’re producing an elitist point of view for this also. You’re making it so that if player A does not do what Player B is doing (and Player B is building based on Quirks), they are called a noob and insulted in team/general chat inside the game. How long do you think this will go on, before Player A says “To hell with this!”, and leaves your game.

Instead of going through and making all of these ‘Mechs each perform a little different (which can even be confusing to old players), you should have looked at making specific weapons upgrades available. With the introduction of CW soon, this will work even better.

You can increase or decrease the amount that the weapon costs, or if it is even available for them to purchase, based on their House choice. Eventually you can add in even more specific bonuses based on corporations or even the periphery states.

You forgot, while you were doing all of this the basic rule of KISS…Keep It Simple Stupid. Instead you went with CAMP “Confuse As Many People”.

With this system, you can also create additional modules for certain Houses and such, to increase speeds, torso twists, and such for specific ‘Mech considered to be owned by this or that house. So, if you own the Atlas DDC and let’s say that it is specifically made by House Steiner, you can add a module that increases its overall speed, torso twist and other character specifics for the ‘mech. You can also increase this by going with a corporation tweek module or whatever you want to call it.

Again, instead of increasing a ‘Mech this much, increase the weapons based on the player’s wants/needs, they can also increase the ‘Mechs physical performance or increase armor or increase engine heat sinks with Module Tweeks.

Here is an example of what I am talking about (and the numbers are there as an example not as fact or a suggestion):

Edited by TB Xiomburg, 05 November 2014 - 06:15 PM.

[Kiiyor]

I really like the idea of faction specific modules... but I'm also ludicrously happy with the quirk system the way it is. While it does promote some degree of specialization, don't forget that most mechs have had partial buffs to general weapon systems in addition to the specific ones.

Going forward, I think this is a great idea for balancing under performers. Easy for PGI to implement (i'm assuming) and mostly easy to come to grips with. If I could suggest anything, it would be making the quirks more prominent in the mechlab.

Even if newcomers are confused by the system, there's a good chance the general quirks will help them out even if they don't equip specialized weapons.

[Salvag3]

Though I'm not a huge fan of the new quirks, I don't see how this system would be any less daunting for a new or vet player. I would have to go though and look at all the different houses perks. Base my new mech choices off what perks were given an then pick based off that. I think the quirks will grow on me in time and as long as they do something to address the under performing clan mechs with quarks of their own or allowing us some more flexibility with the builds ( like more omni pods, making stuff like heat sinks and JJs removable, or to add/remove FF or endo ) they will find the balance they need.

The quirks may not have been the best route from what I have seen they are working, I'm seeing more mechs I have not seen on the field in a long time and over all the community seems happy with it. Some thing needed to be done and I'm willing to let PGI test out some ideas. Maybe they will roll back Quirks, prolly not, maybe they will fine tune them, who knows time will tell.

[Cygone]

Your post, though well written is not accurate.

These "Elitists" tiered the Mech's. This resulted in about 90% of ALL "IS" Mechs' basically being useless because they were not balanced.

The Quirk system is for the game BALANCE. To give more options.

That is a good thing for EVERYONE.

This actually helps the "poor skilled players" more than anyone else. These players do not understand what makes a chassis good or bad. They play it because they like the look of it (or for any other reason), If they then build this chassis to collate to the Quirks they will have a better chassis and build than it was before.

Edited by Cygone, 05 November 2014 - 06:19 PM.

[Tincan Nightmare]

So how would this idea bring a tier 5 mech up to the level of a tier 1 mech? If both mechs can mount the same modules, it still leaves the tier 1 mech (whether thru its hit boxes or hardpoint placement etc..) as superior to the tier 5 mech. If the modules become specific to each chassis or variant, then you are basically choosing a quirk based system, but are forcing players to 'buy' those quirks thru purchase of a module. This also favors the established player who owns lots of mechs and has a large cbill account versus the new player just starting out from scratch without the money to buy those modules.

[Xiomburg]

Tincan Nightmare, on 05 November 2014 - 06:35 PM, said:

So how would this idea bring a tier 5 mech up to the level of a tier 1 mech? If both mechs can mount the same modules, it still leaves the tier 1 mech (whether thru its hit boxes or hardpoint placement etc..) as superior to the tier 5 mech. If the modules become specific to each chassis or variant, then you are basically choosing a quirk based system, but are forcing players to 'buy' those quirks thru purchase of a module. This also favors the established player who owns lots of mechs and has a large cbill account versus the new player just starting out from scratch without the money to buy those modules.

Based on your 'Mech, you would get X Module Tweaks and based on your house would decrease your costs for X 'Mechs.

[UrsusMorologus]

OP your idea of adding differentiation is good as a supplemental system, IE provide "basic" gear that performs the task for sale in the mechlab, then provide a house store with gear that has strengths and weaknesses (something like, faster refire but runs hotter). Then provide access to the house gear through in-game channels, let people mix and match to optimize their builds, maybe make a hole for some roleplay opportunities too. That is a good way to provide depth without mandatory complexity.

I dont think its a good way to balance though, or to simplify what quirks have done.

[Mercules]

TB Xiomburg, on 05 November 2014 - 06:04 PM, said:

The idea behind the quirk system is admirable, but flawed. You have a system in place that makes it very difficult for new players. Then your quirks don’t reflect a lot of the time, the stock ‘Mech load outs, making it more difficult for your customers. I feel as though this was rushed into the game, to solve some basic supposed flaw with underused ‘Mechs.

How much is "a lot of the time"? Because many of them do in fact reflect the stock load out. There are a few that don't but more do than don't. Also, they give you a friggin list

TB Xiomburg, on 05 November 2014 - 06:04 PM, said:

I understand you went to the highly competitive players and received feedback from them; this maybe reflects one to two percent of your player/customer base. So, it appears that you went to the island to get feedback from a bunch of people most of your player/customer base does not, or does not want to, play against. The Quirk system is for these people and not your average player. I think that they are taking advantage of PGI, making them make poor choices based on what “they” want, or to further alienate their base consumer.

While I understand that PGI supposedly went to them, I still think that they got extremely bad advice from elitists and have been completely jerked around.

I don't believe they listened to the competitive players as much as you think they did and so are drawing erroneous conclusions as to their motives. Here is what I believe they attempted to do, based on dev comments:
1. boost up lower tier mechs to make them desirable like the tier 1 mechs
2. do so in a way that reflects either the stock loadout OR the original purpose of the mech
3. differentiate the variants within a chassis so even those with similar hardpoints are different enough to make them all desirable.

[Xiomburg]

You can always add an additional area in the 'Mechlab for the quirks so players understand what they can do for the quirks.

You can do the same for what I am asking for as well. Instead of saying that this 'Mech gets these predetermined quirks, why not let the player base decide on what they want to bring instead.

Your putting us in a box, when it comes to design.

With a tweak system in place, you can have each 'Mech assigned X tweaks. Some will have less because of what they have (ECM and 30% cBill bonus) and how they are ranked.

So lets use the AS7-D-DC as an example:

Currently you have the AS7-D-DC with the following:

1. Additional Structure (RT&LT) +11
2. AC/20 Velocity +5%
3. Ballistic Weapon Velocity +5%

Well some players like the AS7-D-DC as a missile boat and this is left out of the builds and will gimp them:

Instead of predetermining what can be placed, give the players choices. Let them choose three from a list of tweaks that they can implement onto the 'mech. Personally, for a LRM build I would choose the following:

1. Additional Structure (RT&LT) +11
2. LRM/15 Cooldown +5%
3. LRM/15 Heat Generation -5%

Of course, you can make this all part of a unlock system. I would make even cheaper then the current Modules for weapons.

This way, you have tons of different builds just off of one 'Mech. While some will have just one unlock, others will have to 5 or 6. To increase their viability in game.

To boot on top of this, is were you have the weapon specialization for the houses, black market and so on.

You want to make the builds so there competitive, this is a more complicated path and will take longer to implement and you can easily deny certain module increases to certain 'Mechs to avoid abuse, or limit them.

Edited by TB Xiomburg, 05 November 2014 - 10:35 PM.

[Impyrium]

TB Xiomburg, on 05 November 2014 - 10:33 PM, said:

Well some players like the AS7-D-DC as a missile boat and this is left out of the builds and will gimp them:

Yes, and most of them should be court-marshalled for Atlas abuse.

While I can see where you're going, I just don't agree. For one, an unlock system just sounds like a terrible idea. I dislike modules in the first, and the LAST thing I want to see is these so called module bonuses to become essential to run certain builds competitively.

Also, more customization is not a good idea. There was already too much freedom, and that's what lead to many of the problems that obsoleted certain chassis. Just because you want to run a missile boat on an Atlas, doesn't mean you should. There's no point in different chassis if you have the ability to turn every one with missile hardpoints into an optimised LRM boat, or a cool PPC boat. Not fun, at all.

And from a lore perspective, which I gather many of us do still care about, different chassis were built for different standards. The Awesome was DESIGNED to boat PPCs. The Hunchback was DESIGNED to efficiently carry a optimised AC20, even if the TT didn't really get that across. With your solution, nothing makes sense.

So right now, chassis feel unique, proper loadouts are encouraged and silly loadouts are left as is. I really don't understand why people think that they should be able to run any type of build on a 'Mech and do super well with it.

[Naduk]

You clearly do not understand the purpose of quirk system

Before quirks there were clear and obvious mechs that were vastly superior to everything else
These mechs prove themselves time and time again and more and more people gravitate towards them
Reducing field diversity at steady rate

Quirks look to solve that issue
There will allways be mechs that are more popular like the timberwolf, but this system helps even the playing field by providing buffs to individual units that are falling behind
The buffs also help give more identity to each variant but are not restrictive in any way
You do not even need to use them as outside the box builds still work just as well as before

Your ideas are the complete opposite