401 replies to this topic

[Battle Tested]

I personally think quirks are OP. Every IS mech has gotten crazy quirks that not only improve survivability but also massive damage increases. The mechs were balanced fairly well with the way they were. I can see some minor quirks to try and balance between IS to its basic counterpart Clan mech but when you look at them across the board it's just insane. The firestarter before quirks was already completely OP compared to the clan lights and even the other IS light mechs but was still given massive quirks. The Dragon...OMG let me count the ways with the dual rotary AC5's, this thing can easily solo any mech with that firepower. I have seen on multiple occassions where one person brings 4 dragons as his CW drop and put up over 4k damage for the match. Every CW match all you see is firestarters, Stalkers, Thunderbolts, Dragons....all OP with the massive quirks they got. I have seen this game tilt biasedly towards IS mechs (yeah talking to you Russ) and completely ignore some of the clan mechs that need buffed but dont get it even though they were given stupid ones (summoner, kit fox, adder, gargoyle and nova for just a few). I purchased the wave 3 pack but due to knowing they will get the nerf bat immediately upon release, I got a refund on it (they have to give you a refund by law if product has not been received). I refuse to sink any more money into this game due to the quirks breaking it in favor of IS mechs (yeah talking to you again Russ).

[Trolzylulzy]

StillRadioactive, on 20 April 2015 - 11:37 AM, said:

JR7-D/JR7-F/JR7-K: Yes, all three of them.

Once upon a time, all of the 35 tonners had a role. The Firestarter was the knife fighter, the Raven was the sniper, and the Jenner was the hit-and-fade skirmisher. With the introduction of the quirks system, the Jenner was somehow overlooked as the Firestarter was buffed to the point where it completely surpassed the Jenner in the Jenner's own role.

So here's what's needed to bring the Jenner back:

• CT Armor buff. This thing is a giant, walking CT. It's way too fragile to work in the current environment of high damage laser vomit.
  
• Acceleration/Deceleration buff. Make it the 35 tonner of choice for those who enjoy maneuverability over other attributes.

To differentiate the variants from one another, you have to focus on what each one does well.

• JR7-K: Leave it as is. With the CT armor and accel/decel buffs, it should be perfectly fine.
  
• JR7-O: Leave it as is. With the CT armor and accel/decel buffs, it should be perfectly fine.
  
• JR7-D: Missile quirks. It needs a bigger cooldown quirk, and it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to give it heat gen or missile velocity on top of that.
  
• JR7-F: Range only is fine... but it needs to be greatly increased. Leave the 15% energy range and add a 15% medium laser range quirk.

With those changes, balance will be restored to the world of 35-tonners.

This. A million time this.

[MechWarrior3671771]

The Raven 3L narc quirks. Narc is simply not very useful, even for LRMs. To get the most bang for your buck it requires PUG coordination, which is often unreliable. And even then, its primarily for LRMs which spread too much damage and can be defeated by cover.

Add to that the tonnage is too much for its utility. While a narc might be useful on a larger chasis, putting it on a Raven kills your ability to effectively dogfight with other lights. I'd rather sport an LRM5 than narc.

Worse, as you enter the higher tiers of pilots, very few are running LRMs. They prefer weps that do more pinpoint damage.

Granted, I am biased. I love my Raven 3L so much that I bought 4 of them so I wouldn't have to keep swapping back and forth between loadouts. But I wish the quirks were centered around SRM4s, med pulse or med lasers. Or even sensor range. Laser duration would be sweet too.

Edited by Fenrisulvyn, 12 June 2015 - 12:04 AM.

[Yozzman]

Easy, quirks on the timberwolf...

[Peiper]

These timberwolf quirks are aggravating. I thought I'd get used to them, but instead, they just keep reminding me. Every other clan mech I pilot has a rhythm, based on weapon cool down. The Timberwolf is off. I find myself hitting the triggers all the time and WAITING for the lasers to shoot, when they do, the target is already moving out of position. Sure I could 'get used to it' but that's hogwash. I don't even play a laserboat build, but I'm still getting punished for playing with lasers. At least get rid of the cool down nerf. AT LEAST. Sick of it, sick of it, sick of it, sick of it, sick of it......

PGI, if you addressed alphas overall, in ALL mechs, made it so you couldn't fire so many lasers at once EVER, then people would stop boating lasers. Instead, you are picking and scratching at the problem, looking for bandaids for a wound that won't stop bleeding.

[Cosmocat]

I don't like the quirks on the blackjack for basically any of the variants.

The BJ-1X has been turned into a medium laser boat. Medium lasers are boring. They are an innately viable weapon and tons of mechs have quirks for them that basically mandate their use on that variant. I've done so much medium laser boating that I'm sick of it. The BJ-1X is large enough to carry bigger lasers, so the selection of medium lasers as their weapon of choice is especially sad.

Two other blackjacks have a mix of AC/2 quirks (useless) and medium laser quirks (again, dull).

The PPC blackjack is okay in concept but I think the weakness of PPCs in general kill the possibility for this to be a competitive mech. Despite the great hardpoints on the Blackjack I think many other mechs are better snipers (especially the current meta of multiple large laser boating snipers, e.g. quickdraw, raven-2x, etc).

The Hero mech is probably the most interesting, with a mix of Large Pulse and Machine Gun quirks, although I'm not sure how those are supposed to work together given their vastly different ranges and the emphasis in the meta right now upon role specialization, which punishes any kind of bracket build.

[Angels Bane]

ppc quirks on the k2. would much prefer uac5 jam chance.

ac10 quirks on orion v. switch back to ac5

misery is in dire need of ac20 projectile speed buff..

Edited by Angels Bane, 14 June 2015 - 04:22 AM.

[Quardak]

Every Quirk with a Specialised Weapon, cause your only good choice is to put this weapon in...

Only Monobuilds around.

[Telmasa]

Look at the leader boards right now for the tournament. Notice how the Huginn & Grid Iron are consistently higher from places 1 through 50 compared to every other mech in the event - even onces that are twice-or-more the weight of the Huginn and Grid Iron.

That's overpowered quirks at work. That's what is breaking the game and making this event no fun.

Why bother trying to win? If you don't have super-quirks, you are at such a heavy handicap that it's no longer enjoyable.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

Telmasa, on 20 June 2015 - 04:47 PM, said:

... Notice how the Huginn & Grid Iron are consistently higher from places 1 through 50 compared to every other mech in the event - even onces that are twice-or-more the weight of the Huginn and Grid Iron.

That's overpowered quirks at work. ...

There's a lot of truth to this. One symptom is that players flock to overpowered 'mechs, increasing the pool from which to select the top 50 scores, so the scores are doubly over-inflated.

If you go back and compare the results of all the recent leader board events, there are a few stand-outs ...
- really, really bad: LCT-1V, GRF-1N (P), COM-TDK, JR7-D (F)
- really, really good: GHR-5J ®, CN9-YLW, ZEU-6S ®, CTF-IM, BLR-1G (P)

I'm looking forward to seeing how the scores from the current leader board break out among the rest.

I'm really looking forward to some invasion 'mech leader board events, so that we can see how they compare to the rest of the field. I just hope PGI doesn't change the scoring formula anytime soon.

Edited by Kageru Ikazuchi, 20 June 2015 - 10:56 PM.

[rangergord]

Battle Tested, on 08 June 2015 - 02:32 PM, said:

blah blah blah nerf IS

You're forgetting that most if not all of those mechs have downsides that already balance those quirks. The dragon-1N? Huge CT and neutered by blowing off the gun arm. Stalkers? Low engine cap, hard to spread damage (usually loses a ST quickly) and no arm actuators. Thunderbolts? Low engine cap and hit boxes that make it easy to target a specific component (not XL friendly). The firestarter? Have you actually looked at the quirks and the numbers? Those aren't massive. Sure it looks OP compared to clan lights, but only if you try to play a clan light like an IS light. Let's wait until the arctic cheetah drops and then come back to that. Plus there's the whole clan tech issue (clan XL, lighter weapons, longer ranges, CLAN SSRM4-6, clan DHS, etc.). The clans are not supposed to be endgame and not supposed to faceroll. Some of those "superquirks" become completely necessary when you look at the entire picture of the mech.

[Lugh]

Quirks are bad m'kay. They are a slapstick attempt to balance that fails utterly because instead of getting balance you get even more boating and Meta based play.

They solve nothing.

Kageru Ikazuchi, on 20 June 2015 - 10:52 PM, said:

There's a lot of truth to this. One symptom is that players flock to overpowered 'mechs, increasing the pool from which to select the top 50 scores, so the scores are doubly over-inflated.

If you go back and compare the results of all the recent leader board events, there are a few stand-outs ...
- really, really bad: LCT-1V, GRF-1N (P), COM-TDK, JR7-D (F)
- really, really good: GHR-5J ®, CN9-YLW, ZEU-6S ®, CTF-IM, BLR-1G (P)

I'm looking forward to seeing how the scores from the current leader board break out among the rest.

I'm really looking forward to some invasion 'mech leader board events, so that we can see how they compare to the rest of the field. I just hope PGI doesn't change the scoring formula anytime soon.

I'd imagine that they'll be all but equal to the rest.

[gloowa]

Hi

From a quick overview of responses so far, i see that most people are responding to "Which mech is quirked the worst in your opinion" which is not necessarly what is needed here.

I would like to voice my opinion on all the quirks overall:
I dislike all direct buff/nerf weapon quirks. Dislike them very very much. What i would like is for all those quirks to be transformed into indirect effect quirks. Cooldown is primary culprit here. That needs to go. Heat is ok-ish. It doesn't make weapon any stronger DPS wise, just allows you to use it longer. Range is kinda meh. Most of the time it does not matter, but it is direct buff nontheless.

In any case, the XYZ-weapon quirks need to go. The most "narrow" quirk should encompass entire weapon class, for instance:
* AC10 family (AC10, UAC10, LBX10)
* AC family (AC2, AC5, AC10, AC20, but NOT UAC or LBX)
But in any case most of them should be energy/balistic/missile.

On some mechs i saw pretty good quirk ideas: UAC jam chance modifiers, turn/twist/acc speeds, stuff like that. Things that are not directly buffing or nerfing a chassis, like additional XYZ armor/structure do. The best quirks for lights could be jump jet related: jj fuel regeneration speed, jj fuel capacity. Again, not direct buffs to thrust.

How about making mechs electronics differ a bit from chassis to chassis? faster/slower lock time, faster target info or different target retention angle/time. Maybe some cockpit shake quirks?

I think that with wide enough array of non-direct quirks it's possible to make those chassi (<- is that the plural form of chassis?) that need help more viable, whithout resorting to straight-up buffing it's weapons or armor etc.

Not only those type of quirks can create very interesting advantages but more importantly, they do not streamline particular variant into single weapon.

[DAYLEET]

Least favorite are the ones that are too specific like AC20 quirks instead of balistic quirks because it wan;t to make everyone the same.

[Void Angel]

gloowa, on 24 June 2015 - 07:06 AM, said:

chassi (<- is that the plural form of chassis?)

No; "chassis" is one of those rare words in which the singular and plural share the same spelling. =)

[Wronka]

With 16+ pages of posts i doubt my post will even be seen, but my vote is rather simple...

REMOVE ALL QUIRKS. Yeah... seriously. I know there is already talks of a complete re-balance of the system as a whole, so really this thread doesn't matter too much. But we don't really know what that is just yet.

Regardless, the fact that it takes bonuses of 20-50% before people complain that a mech is too strong shows that simply IS weapons/mechs are lacking as a whole. And this isn't only IS, some clan mechs are bad too, but there are far more "good" clan mechs then there are IS (when looking at base stats). I think a complete re-look at IS weapons might be in order, not just removing a few "bad" quirks... which is what I am hoping is the complete re-balance that is supposed to come in August.

Edited by Wronka, 01 July 2015 - 10:14 AM.

[Telmasa]

Just a reminder, as mentioned by Russ in the last townhall their goal will to create one big update with a top-to-bottom approach to balancing all mechs, and creating a guideline or formula for balancing new mechs from that point on.

So, eventually (well, August lol)...the fix will happen.

Edited by Telmasa, 01 July 2015 - 01:05 PM.

[EvilCow]

"your least favourite"... is very bland.

Hard to tell which one I hate more, I hate all of them with such passion.

Edited by EvilCow, 02 July 2015 - 04:51 AM.

[DaFrog]

The vindicator quirks and the griffin quirks. They need a revisit.
Also I would like to see ams quirks, and or regular ppcs minimum range quirks or minimum range modules. or even minimum range quirks and modules for IS lrms.

[DaFrog]

I need to add something about rifleman type mechs: blackjacks, jaegers, canon catapults, etc.
Those mechs were not originally created for mech warfare, they are anti-aerial platforms.
They throw flack to cover the skies. The variants were adapted to make them kind of good at mech combat, but it should never compete with their class equivalent at that.
So any quirk that turns a black jack into a hunchback or a jaeger into a thunderbolt should be strongly revisited.