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I don't think the purpose of quirking Mechs is aimed at achieving balance or that PGI has any expectation that one day they will find that perfect balance and Mechs will never need quirked again. But rather we'll continue to see regular quirk passes that will shake up the field, nerfing the OP builds of yesterday and creating surprising new stars of tomorrow.
I have a brother who designs games for Wii and handhelds, and a few years ago I was complaining to him how Riot has no idea what they are doing trying to balance the Champs in LoL since every other month they kept making changes that buffed and nerfed Champs across the board; sometimes in surprisingly radical ways, only to undo it in the next patch. I thought it was crazy.
My brother had an industy term for such a strategy and explained it with these main points...
1) A game development team represents a tiny fraction of the people who actually play the game. It's literally impossible for them to anticipate every combination, build, strategy, or tactic the public will employ. Specifically in a competitive pvp game with a multitude of variables, true balance is not possible unless everyone plays the exact same build/class/gear/whatever set up (and how many people would play MWO if there was only one Mech with one possible loadout?).
2) The communities will discover the OP combinations or builds and exploit them, tears of rage will follow. So the developer will need control levers to adjust power levels, but they will need to do so without killing the flavor of the class/chassis/champ that needs adjusted. Behind the scenes math is the best way to accomplish this, and MWO Mechs were lacking in such control levers. Quirks make it possible to tweak power levels in subtle ways.
3) These changes need to come a regular intervals, usually a couple months apart. This creates a never ending cycle where the devs make changes, mainly to kill off the major OP problems, but also to create new opportunities to be discovered. The community has time to adjust to the changes, make new discoveries, and get excited about new OP builds. Then after they've had time to exploit them a bit and the backlash starts growing, a new set of changes is introduced and the cycle starts again with new winners and losers.
4) This strategy is good for business. Competitive players will want to own every champ/mech/class so they can always exploit the FotM builds. Since the biggest duds of today are prime candidates for buffs tomorrow, all the products the devs create get a time to shine. And the devs don't have to stress too hard about any specific tweak they make or quirk they pass, since it's only temporary anyway.
TL:DR - The game will never be perfectly balanced and PGI knows this, quirks are just here to keep things interesting by knocking down the OP Mechs after they had their fun and create new opportunities to be discovered. If you hate a particular quirk, do voice your opinion on it since that will help your cause on the next pass. But understand the nature and necessity of the perpetual balance-shifting cycle. In order to have a pvp game with so many variables to play with and enjoy, it's par for the course IMO.
Edited by Fragnot, 18 March 2015 - 08:43 AM.
