134 replies to this topic

[Lulz Kev]

NextGame, on 18 February 2015 - 01:41 AM, said:

I don't really appreciate having to reconfigure my mechs frequently

This.

Going from 25% SRM cool down to 20% SRM cool down is fine. I can work with that.

Going from 25% SRM cool down to 25% PPC heat gen. Is mind-numbingly UNACCEPTABLE.

If a patch releases and I have to spend a few million cbills to reconfigure each mech in my stable it quite hoesntly feels like a mugging rather then a "quirk pass"

[Lily from animove]

DTF Kev, on 18 February 2015 - 01:52 AM, said:

This.

Going from 25% SRM cool down to 20% SRM cool down is fine. I can work with that.

Going from 25% SRM cool down to 25% PPC heat gen. Is mind-numbingly UNACCEPTABLE.

If a patch releases and I have to spend a few million cbills to reconfigure each mech in my stable it quite hoesntly feels like a mugging rather then a "quirk pass"

so you instantly followed the flavour of the month and now rant about youtr money being gone? Never ever follow a system thats in more or less a wild test condition.

[The Dreaded Baron B Killer]

Lily from animove, on 18 February 2015 - 02:13 AM, said:

so you instantly followed the flavour of the month and now rant about youtr money being gone? Never ever follow a system thats in more or less a wild test condition.

exactly.

I remember when I finally got Atlas builds I was happy with: they were nothing like the meta...

And i remember some cocky jocks giving me weird comments about them..

Most of them would shut up when I got 5-6 kills and 1000+ damage of course.

The quirks are interesting, but apart from the PPC chaos, they weren't game breaking...

and I most certainly didn't see a need to change any of the builds I like based on them, or to buy mechs because of them either (I embarrassingly sold my 9SE when I needed another mech bay...ah well).

It's a game, just play. and if you're not having fun, take a break. I have nights where my team mates are greenhorns and i don't break 100 damage.. when that happens, I just exit and do something useful. I don't feel the need to come on here and be like "dammit PGI, stop taking away my epic wins and making me look like less of the legendary mech warrior that i am!!".

I'm patching now and looking forward to seeing the changes made, because ya know, changes keep the game fresh and semi-interesting. God forbid this be like an ACTUAL shooter where nothing ever changes and u just kill crap without any thought at all...

[Variant1]

Or how bout we remove the cooldown and heat gen quirks? it seriously decreases time to kill and the -heat gen quirks make it easier to boat same weapons kindoff making ghost heat pointless, ive seen stalkers with 4 larger lasers now i see stalkers with 5. Range and structure quirks i got no beef with tho.

[Water Bear]

I don't even...

IS mechs without quirks are worse than clan mechs by a lot. You can crunch numbers all day to show this. You need something to balance the power. Major game changes require testing and time to get correct.

OP rage does not compute.

Edited by Water Bear, 18 February 2015 - 06:20 AM.

[AdamBaines]

Lotharian, on 16 February 2015 - 10:08 PM, said:

IMHO - Quirks are an admission of fault in building your mechs,

I actually like the whole quirk thing. Im not going to get into your argument about how its compensating for other poor design choices by PGI, but I think it brings a flavor that other MW games have not been able to. I love reading the TROs that talk about the different makes and model of certain kinda of weapons and how they operate differently, and how that might positively or negatively impact a mech. I wish they would bring more of that into play with not just +- on range and heat, but also function with certain IS chassis less likely to have their Ultras jam, or take up more or less crit space. Not all manufactures build AC10s the same way with the same effectiveness.

[InspectorG]

PhoenixFire55, on 18 February 2015 - 01:32 AM, said:

LMAO. No clue at all. Yeah, right, all Dragons are viable now. And all Awesomes. Oh yeah, and all Locusts and Spiders of course. And of course lets not forget the new king of medium mechs - the Trebushyt ...

Dragons and Awesomes werent viable at all before quirks, now you can use at least one.

You saying you want less variety?

Viable mechs before quirks:

FS or Jenner
Shad or Griffin
Phract or Jager
DS or Stalker or DDC for the ECM?

Such choices...

[PhoenixFire55]

InspectorG, on 18 February 2015 - 01:50 PM, said:

Dragons and Awesomes werent viable at all before quirks, now you can use at least one.

You saying you want less variety?

Viable mechs before quirks:

FS or Jenner
Shad or Griffin
Phract or Jager
DS or Stalker or DDC for the ECM?

Such choices...

Viable mechs after quirks ...

Thunderbolt, Thunderbolt, Firestarter, Firestarter.

Such greater choices...

Go play at least one high tier CW match against IS.

[Lily from animove]

PhoenixFire55, on 19 February 2015 - 02:18 AM, said:

Viable mechs after quirks ...

Thunderbolt, Thunderbolt, Firestarter, Firestarter.

Such greater choices...

Go play at least one high tier CW match against IS.

I think this topic would probably disagree with you

What I figured out is that many poeple have not lerned to use the quirks correctly, I saw drgaons that run over the open field into 4 people, doing creazy damage. Would they finally not make these suicide runs in the open they would do so much better. But as long as they have a decent damage n the score many poeple stop trying to improve and squeeze ou the full potential of a mech.

Many quirked mechs have loads of unused potential, but the majority of players just don't use this potential.

Edited by Lily from animove, 19 February 2015 - 02:58 AM.

[kapusta11]

I agree with OP, it's the global rules that are flawed, you can't fix them with quirks, not all of them at least. Those issues are:

Lack of dice roll, not litteraly of course, but since you don't "roll" for hit allocation, nothing stops you from 1) stacking several weapons of the same type, 2) firing them simultaneously and 3) hitting specific component in the process. You can fix 1) via hardpoints or, which is worse, sized hardpoints, both limit customization. You can fix 3) via cone of fire or making all weapons spread damage, this would reduce gameplay diversity since all weapons will work, more or less, in the same way, people will get bored sooner or later and leave. PGI tried to address 2) via Ghost Heat but that works only/mostly for energy weapons and correlates with issue listed below. PGI also address it with Gauss when Dire Wolf was released by allowing you to charge only 2 at the same time. Convergence serves the same purpose but its implementation is rather frustrating. In other words, the nature of two band-aid fixes above can be described as damage cap, the problem is those solutions only work for particular weapons/weapon family and Ghost Heat affects variables it shoudn't have been (heat itself). Addressing 2) is preferable since you'll work directly with the cause of the problem - focused damage amount, again, without affecting other variables and creating convoluted relations between them in the process.

TT values of heat dissipation. In TT you have an opportunity to fire, say PPC, once per turn, that's 10 sec, MWO has 2.5 reduced recycle times but stock dissipation (1 DHS dissipates 2 heat per 10 sec). This means ACs or other weapons that are supposed to be heat neutral can still be fired "on cooldown" while energy weapons require "heat management" which is nothing more but waiting.

Poor mech geometry (includes size, hardpoints layout and hitboxes mapping), basically a design without function in mind.

Edited by kapusta11, 19 February 2015 - 03:38 AM.

[Jaeger Gonzo]

To OP.
Nothing should be set in stone.
They invented quirks fallowing your logic in the first place. Rising all game just to match 3 OP clan mechs, witch was wrong if you ask me. Resulting in downgrading TTK, viable tactics, and game play.
Quirks should be something different, or at least something more, not just direct buff, but flavor.

Edited by Jaeger Gonzo, 19 February 2015 - 05:32 AM.

[Tombstoner]

kapusta11, on 19 February 2015 - 03:33 AM, said:

I agree with OP, it's the global rules that are flawed, you can't fix them with quirks, not all of them at least. Those issues are:

Lack of dice roll, not litteraly of course, but since you don't "roll" for hit allocation, nothing stops you from 1) stacking several weapons of the same type, 2) firing them simultaneously and 3) hitting specific component in the process. You can fix 1) via hardpoints or, which is worse, sized hardpoints, both limit customization. You can fix 3) via cone of fire or making all weapons spread damage, this would reduce gameplay diversity since all weapons will work, more or less, in the same way, people will get bored sooner or later and leave. PGI tried to address

With regards to point 3) it's very dependent on how you implement the COF. you should be able to have the same pin point game play we have now if your standing still and chain firing your weapons. if you start to move or group weapons then the COF begins to take effect. This would in fact increase weapon diversity. Why, suddenly your 30 point alpha is not as good as it used to be and with a bit more skill you can recover and not suffer any loss in performance. also how much COF can be tuned by weapon type.

Lets say the ppc has a cof value of 5 and the gauss is 1 standing still 0 . Your COF value is 6. when linking 2 x ppcs its 10. chain fire the ppcs and its 0. The COF mechanic has options for decoupling high damage alphas as the most efficient way to kill a mech. leading to longer times to kill. that is unless your facing a skilled player who can place multiple single shots in the same location instead of having it handed to them with group fire.

Something simple like that lets the targeting computer become a targeting computer and reduce the COF value by 5% increments per level of targeting computer. level 10 is 50% reduction. if tuned right can give you the same game play we have now. you just have to pay for it with tonnage or better yet over come the mechanic with SKILL......

[Lily from animove]

kapusta11, on 19 February 2015 - 03:33 AM, said:

I agree with OP, it's the global rules that are flawed, you can't fix them with quirks, not all of them at least. Those issues are:

Lack of dice roll, not litteraly of course, but since you don't "roll" for hit allocation, nothing stops you from 1) stacking several weapons of the same type, 2) firing them simultaneously and 3) hitting specific component in the process. You can fix 1) via hardpoints or, which is worse, sized hardpoints, both limit customization. You can fix 3) via cone of fire or making all weapons spread damage, this would reduce gameplay diversity since all weapons will work, more or less, in the same way, people will get bored sooner or later and leave. PGI tried to address 2) via Ghost Heat but that works only/mostly for energy weapons and correlates with issue listed below. PGI also address it with Gauss when Dire Wolf was released by allowing you to charge only 2 at the same time. Convergence serves the same purpose but its implementation is rather frustrating. In other words, the nature of two band-aid fixes above can be described as damage cap, the problem is those solutions only work for particular weapons/weapon family and Ghost Heat affects variables it shoudn't have been (heat itself). Addressing 2) is preferable since you'll work directly with the cause of the problem - focused damage amount, again, without affecting other variables and creating convoluted relations between them in the process.

TT values of heat dissipation. In TT you have an opportunity to fire, say PPC, once per turn, that's 10 sec, MWO has 2.5 reduced recycle times but stock dissipation (1 DHS dissipates 2 heat per 10 sec). This means ACs or other weapons that are supposed to be heat neutral can still be fired "on cooldown" while energy weapons require "heat management" which is nothing more but waiting.

Poor mech geometry (includes size, hardpoints layout and hitboxes mapping), basically a design without function in mind.

The lack of dicerol, interestingly lasers transport the "dicerol" a bit, because the interaction between gunner and target (twisting and non PP Shots,) resemples the randomness of both pilots movement. Yet IS AC's violate this very much and Gauss as well. Clangauss have this ability again by being a stream weapon. Actually the only dice like implemention would be a cone of fire, but many people in shooters don't like this, becaue it is then ore arcadish and less skill involved in how the result of a decision ends. But this would really divide the community on how it would be doen right.

Yes TT transition into Live game was not so good. Ac 20 made 4x the damage of an Ac 5 in TT, in MWo dps o both tell you something else.
Well And see what happened, the armor was doubled, because the too low cooldowns caused too high dps and too quick TTK. Maybe it would have from the beginning be better to increase the cooldown and keeping lower armor vlaues. this way every shot would count that you do and since you can not shoot often its more important to do the right shot than just shoot like crazy. But I guess many people would describe such a gameplay as too slow paced which is not the modern state of art current shooters have. But the System would make more sense mechanic wise.

The mech geometry, well TT never had line of sights and stuff so mechs were invented just for style, never for usability. And so, we will not be able to compensate this much except adjusting some twistrates and HP. But generally, you can not "fix" a Dragon by reshaping his gemoetry into a non dragon. So this will never be a real subject of change unless PGI and the fanbase would be accepting to create non lore mechs with own shapes.

Tombstoner, on 19 February 2015 - 06:15 AM, said:

With regards to point 3) it's very dependent on how you implement the COF. you should be able to have the same pin point game play we have now if your standing still and chain firing your weapons. if you start to move or group weapons then the COF begins to take effect. This would in fact increase weapon diversity. Why, suddenly your 30 point alpha is not as good as it used to be and with a bit more skill you can recover and not suffer any loss in performance. also how much COF can be tuned by weapon type.

Lets say the ppc has a cof value of 5 and the gauss is 1 standing still 0 . Your COF value is 6. when linking 2 x ppcs its 10. chain fire the ppcs and its 0. The COF mechanic has options for decoupling high damage alphas as the most efficient way to kill a mech. leading to longer times to kill. that is unless your facing a skilled player who can place multiple single shots in the same location instead of having it handed to them with group fire.

Something simple like that lets the targeting computer become a targeting computer and reduce the COF value by 5% increments per level of targeting computer. level 10 is 50% reduction. if tuned right can give you the same game play we have now. you just have to pay for it with tonnage or better yet over come the mechanic with SKILL......

the idea is good, and makes sense, but I guess many gamers would just not like it

Edited by Lily from animove, 19 February 2015 - 06:35 AM.

[kapusta11]

Tombstoner, on 19 February 2015 - 06:15 AM, said:

With regards to point 3) it's very dependent on how you implement the COF. you should be able to have the same pin point game play we have now if your standing still and chain firing your weapons. if you start to move or group weapons then the COF begins to take effect. This would in fact increase weapon diversity. Why, suddenly your 30 point alpha is not as good as it used to be and with a bit more skill you can recover and not suffer any loss in performance. also how much COF can be tuned by weapon type.

Lets say the ppc has a cof value of 5 and the gauss is 1 standing still 0 . Your COF value is 6. when linking 2 x ppcs its 10. chain fire the ppcs and its 0. The COF mechanic has options for decoupling high damage alphas as the most efficient way to kill a mech. leading to longer times to kill. that is unless your facing a skilled player who can place multiple single shots in the same location instead of having it handed to them with group fire.

Something simple like that lets the targeting computer become a targeting computer and reduce the COF value by 5% increments per level of targeting computer. level 10 is 50% reduction. if tuned right can give you the same game play we have now. you just have to pay for it with tonnage or better yet over come the mechanic with SKILL......

As I said, you're adding in another unrelated variable - movement, while the ONLY thing that creates issues is the amount of focused damage, according to your idea light mechs will immediately turn into garbage. However, since you mentioned group fire, I suggested a couple of times to address 2) and simply cap group fire damage at certain level. if you exceed that amount the linked weapons either won't fire or will do so but spread damage in CoF (here it would act as penalty of sorts). To make sure people won't use macros the penalty may remain for 0.5 after firing. The exact amount should vary depending on weapon mechanic, the lowest is obviously for FLD weapons, a slightly higher for pulse lasers, then regular lasers etc, weapon range may be taken into account as well. The whole idea it to make statistic work for you, if you divite current alphas in two separate shots they will spread damage because of player's inability to shoot same component 100% of the time. Unlike forced chainfire big weapons won't have advantage over massed smaller ones, unlike Ghost Heat it will work with any weapon but, what is more important, you'll still be able to shoot where you aim for just with not as many weapons as you'd like at the same time.

There is nothing bad about having damage cap, it all depends on the actual numbers. For example, you could've tone down Gauss+2xPPC combo or 4xPPC Stalker ages ago by setting 30 FLD cap, without Gauss charge mechanics or projectile speed desync or making certain weapons crazy hot OR you could do the same thing with laser vomit by setting say 40-45 damage cap due to laser DoT spread mechanic.

Edited by kapusta11, 19 February 2015 - 07:02 AM.

[Cyberiad]

I agree that quirks are a bad way of trying to put a special band-aid for every mech. I think too that quirks were in part motivated by the arrival of clan mechs and attemping to balance IS mechs to clan mechs. The flaw that I see with this is that clan mechs cost more cbills so trying to make IS mechs that cost less cbills as good as mechs that cost more cbills invalidates any reason for clan mechs to cost as much cbills as they do. What IS really needed were mechs that cost the same amount of cbills that clan mechs do. What is not fair is not that clan mechs are better than IS mechs but rather that clans in CW can bring a 50m cbill mech to the battle whereas a IS player can only bring at most a mech costing 16m cbills. What should have been done was for IS mechs to be able to fit clan engines and equipment. The argument that it is against lore/canon is not a valid argument since this is Mechwarrior Online and not Battletech online. None of the previous MW games ever followed canon exactly.

[blood4blood]

Kiiyor, on 17 February 2015 - 12:34 AM, said:

<snip>
Hmmm. Now I have a hankering to watch some really early ultimate fighting.

I've got UFC 2-3-4 on VHS somewhere if you can find a VCR.

[Tombstoner]

Silicon Life, on 19 February 2015 - 12:26 PM, said:

The argument that it is against lore/canon is not a valid argument since this is Mechwarrior Online and not Battletech online. None of the previous MW games ever followed canon exactly.

Well that does justify just about anything. hey its MWO not BTO so why cant i have a healing gun, energy shields, x-ray lasers, predator cloaking device. well cause MWO is supposed to be people playing a BT sim not a FPS.

When you diverge from a sim to a fps... things change drastically and the BT TT system breaks. No incarnation of MW has been this far off in my experience: quirks, ghost heat.

[Numnuts]

They would be better off with a blanket quirk of 15-25% for all weapons on all IS mechs..

Then they can just walk away and focus on real ****.

Edited by Numnuts, 19 February 2015 - 01:17 PM.

[Outlaw]

Honestly on paper most IS mechs should be able to curbstomp clanners due to their superior pinpoint damage regardless of quirks. The problem is a large portion of the extremely well coordinated and highly skilled units went clan, while only a handful stayed in the IS. Another issue is that the IS doesn't seem to press their brawling advantages and instead try to do the snipe-fest with the clanners and then wonder why they lose.

But because most defense battles end up being pugs going against 12 man clan groups people try to perceive it as Clan Tech being OP when in fact it is just Teamwork and coordination is OP. Sure Pugs have VOIP now but the pug group hasn't been playing together for months or years, so while they may be able to coordinate they cant help compensate for the weaknesses or play off the strengths of their teammates.

Going back to the original topic at hand, quirks on some mechs was required because had they not done it you would only see a handful of chassis be viable. Unfortunately PGI screwed the pooch on a few of them and made them grossly OP and because of that you still see a FoTM mentality. Personally I have fallen in love with the Cataphract 2X post quirk which has become one of my go-to brawlers, and the Hunchback 4G is my medium weight brawler choice because prior to the quirks the vulnerability of the gun made it questionable in usefulness, but with the boost in fire rate it seems to be a good trade off.

[InspectorG]

PhoenixFire55, on 19 February 2015 - 02:18 AM, said:

Viable mechs after quirks ...

Thunderbolt, Thunderbolt, Firestarter, Firestarter.

Such greater choices...

Go play at least one high tier CW match against IS.

Ive played CW both IS and Clan, not comp level though.

Comp level is gonna have fewer choices due to min/max, so, that only matters to them. Unless you want all mechs to have the same loudouts and geometry...only way to get full 'balance'.

I pug a lot cuz my potato cant handle too much CW, more builds are viable now in Puglandia. Ill take that with the quirks.

Role warfare would be ideal but we aint got that yet. Pinpoint damage is king and at least we have several ways to get it now.

Dont know why anyone would want to revert back to pre-quirk. Most variants at that point were just an EXP tax.