Fragnot, on 23 May 2015 - 02:40 PM, said:
The design of these Mechs was done many years before MWO. MWO is just bringing them to life in an FPS style video game. In order to stay true to original designs, while at the same time making an FPS game that offers a variety of playable Mechs to choose from, quirks are the way to go.
They recently gave the Orion a ton of positive quirks but it still wasn't enough for me to wanna play with all those low slung hardpoints. That's not PGI's fault, they didn't 'design' the Orion. Now if they gave that Orion shoulder mounted energy or ballistic hardpoints I bet a lot of people would want to play it even with no quirks; but would it still be an Orion?
The original Battletech artwork was never meant to be an FPS. Adapting them to an FPS creates a fundamental problem. This was something that should never have been done in the first place. Battletech as a digital FPS needs a total overhaul and why without, other game houses won't even touch it. This is like taking a car from the sixties, mod it, and try to make it compete against a modern 2015 car purposedly built for racing.
Bullock and Weisman had the perfect opportunity to say to the fan base, "Hey we will rebuild and reboot this franchise, redesign things from the ground up, to make it fit the gaming demands of the 21st century." This didn't happen, and we are still dealing with fundamental issues stemming from a heavily outdated franchise design. Don't try to satisfy the old fans, create a new generation of fans instead.
The wise thing that should have been done, is from the beginning, to create artwork neutral hitboxes, or have the artwork done with hitboxes in mind. If they failed to do this initially, this should have been caught in the beta stage, not way past the Saber packages. They should have raised the arms a little, so it bends with a 30 or 120 degree instead of a 90 degree elbow position. Gun barrels should have been placed on the upper part of the fist, raising the point further, and making the mech look like they are holding a gun in a natural position. Instead of putting the barrel below the forearm (see Battlemaster) and making the problem even worst. I would have said completely no to all breast mounted weapons, any weapon located on the torso goes to the shoulder. It is just awful to see mechs with "barrel nipples", like guns coming out from their boobs or something --- even the Japanese anime industry eliminated boob weapons in mech artwork decades ago.
The result of trying to "faitfhfully" incorporate lore designs into a geometrically sensitive game, designs that are not meant for this purpose, has resulted in breeding weaknesses that are not in fact part of the narrative lore. The Awesome is supposed to be after all, Awesome. In games that don't rely on geometry, such as MechCommander, the Awesome is a force to reckon with, just like in the lore. But in this game, its just a joke. Even quirks have not returned its vaunted reputation. Its clear you can't have both, the game should have prioritized which part of the lore it would rather preserve.
Quirks add a new layer of complexity in balancing, already worsened by modules. We are also seeing it create new imbalances that are not part of the lore, like the energy superiority of Thunderbolts. The Stalker doesn't have any geometrical weaknesses, and in fact, its probably one of the most perfect geometrically superior mechs in the game, yet one variant is gifted with particularly strong quirks. So the idea of quirks trying to repair geometric imbalances falls apart there. Not only has the idea has its problems, but it also a big failure point --- its very execution. The fabric of lore always dictates there will be certain imbalances, that is simply part of the narrative. The game must have these imbalances, otherwise it won't be "this" that is essential to its identity, and so long we keep the lore imbalances under a measurable control. However, what we do not need imbalances that are not part of the lore fabric, and that, thankfully for quirks, is what has been created.
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