9 replies to this topic

[Elbrun]

Now I expect this to be a touchy subject, but I'll just come right out and explain my reasoning for why I believe all weapon/armor/structure quirks should be fully, completely, and totally removed from MWO.


1: Weapon quirks have a tendency to overpower certain variants due to hardpoint access and quirks that stack towards a certain weapon type. This leads to episodes of 'nerfing' where a chassis has it's 'trick' changed, and rage over the 'meta killing nerf' are heard (wubverine?).

2: Weapon quirks on some chassis just don't make much sense (current live servers), in which a quirk exists for a weapon that the chassis only has 1 (maybe 2) hardpoint(s) for total. Or where the variant has a quirk for a weapon that isn't standard to the variant, thus another 'why have this quirk and NOT get the weapon with the variant?' issue.

3: Armor quirks are the least seen quirk. This particular quirk type is just lazy, and used to make up for bad geometry (model design) and hit boxes (model design). Basically making up for the fact that some designs SHOULD just suck. Bad designs should be bad (speaking of lore here), some designs were rushed, had poor design teams, lacked access to better facilities or other reasons. While other were better designed due whatever reasons.

4: THE MOST OVERUSED LAZY QUIRK... The Internal Structure boosting quirk.
Seriously, bad designs and hit boxes can be due to lore (But lets be honest, many, many mechs have terrible hit boxes). Why should a badly designed mech get boosts to compensate that NEVER EXISTED until MWO.

Don't get me wrong, I'm only against those 3 types of quirks. Speed, heat management, maneuverability, and other types of 'quirks' I have no issues with. And a lot of variety could come from the use of those kinds of quirks on the existing chassis.

As a side comment, sensor related quirks should have their primary placement in the HEAD of clan mechs, not the CT. As the sensor internal is in the head after all. But seeing as headshots are ridiculously hard even compared to tabletop battletech, even a sensor crit is less likely than my winning the lottery.

Edited by Elbrun, 13 September 2015 - 09:41 PM.

[Dracol]

Elbrun, on 13 September 2015 - 09:40 PM, said:

4: THE MOST OVERUSED LAZY QUIRK... The Internal Structure boosting quirk.
Seriously, bad designs and hit boxes can be due to lore (But lets be honest, many, many mechs have terrible hit boxes). Why should a badly designed mech get boosts to compensate that NEVER EXISTED until MWO.

Because MWO is the first Mechwarrior game to actually try to have some semblance of balance between mechs. Because no one wants to ever buy a gimped mech because lore wise it was a bad design. Why should cool looking mechs with larger than a stormcrow's torso be regulated to the trash bin just because it never got a boost in a prior iteration of Mechwarrior/BTech? Must we all suffer from the sins of the past?

[Kirtanus]

Yea, all previous Mechwarriors had full set of mechs available by default (no f2p those times). In leagues only a couple of them were valid to play on high level. MWLL on other side introduced many builds which haven't exist in BT lore but the were fixed.

In MWO every mech should be balanced based on their hardpoints and hitboxes which is based on the current weapons balance.

For role warfare its fine and interesting to have sensors quirks but as additional buff for lights who shouldn't have big armour/structure doubling their life time.

[Gernot von Kurzmann]

iam with YOU!!!!


all quirks removed - and done. no one must built his mech quirk like....

AND PLEASE NOOOO RE-BALANCE!!

Make more mechs, maps and the new weapons.
#

thx

[Lily from animove]

So you say designs should suck? lol, yeah thast how balance works, not
I doubt with this logic you were actually ever playing BT, because there nothing was "rushed" in fact a dice never cared if yor mech was slim like a stick or huge as a skyscraper.
With your vision of this in mifd we could simply delete a dozen of mechs form MWO for beign dead and unused at all.

You Sir, have a very fine sense to how to kill a game in the shortest possible time.

[Elbrun]

I stand behind my statements that some designs just suck, and due to those designs sucking maybe they shouldn't be played. It's easy enough to build a model based on artwork and bring it into a game, but scaling issues plague MWO, and some designs which are marginal get worse due to hit box shape and model scale. So rather than fix issues with the scale and hit box shapes, it's just easier (i.e. lazy) to add in armor/structure quirks to band-aid the issue. On paper a mech can look fine, but when it's on the map, being shot at and shooting, that is when you find out where the real issues are with a mech. In the case of many mechs, it's a case of 'tabletop translates badly to 3d FPS' because 'rule of cool' designs aren't necessarily good designs.

Adding quirks to mechs to 'balance them' doesn't balance them at all. They are built on the same basic framework of rules. X (in 5 ton increments) tons = Y internal structure (locational), X tons = Z maximum armor (locational). All mechs have Q tons dedicated to gyro, sensors, cockpit, based on X tonnage / R amount. Etc. etc. etc. Quirking out of the base formula to cover model issues doesn't balance a chassis, it unbalances it compared to others of the same tonnage. Furthermore, within a tonnage range, variation in number of available hardpoints (and their locations) complicates balancing.

And once you add in armor/structure quirks, PGI finds that weapon suddenly aren't where they should be. Adding weapons quirks, and unbalancing the various weapons and chassis further. Sadly, it becomes a spiral, balancing 1a unbalances 2a, which requires a further balancing of 2a, which then unbalances 3a... etc etc etc.

The only way to balance mechs is to actually remove the easiest to remove balance breakers, and then FIX the real issues with model scaling, and hit boxes. And while their at it, revert weapons to their canon ranges, which would make sensors/infowar MUCH more useful and necessary.

[Dracol]

One either needs a balancing factor to account for varied mech shapes, or one has a game with very similar shaped mechs. From its inception, Battletech has had mechs of all shapes and sizes. It is a sacred cow, that were it to be sacrificed so no chassis is to dissimilar from another chassis of the same tonnage, the game would no longer be Mechwarrior. Since that cow can not be sacrificed and still be called a battletech game, other means of balance have been and are being pursued.

Edited by Dracol, 14 September 2015 - 03:12 PM.

[oldradagast]

If this were done, they could remove 90% of the mechs from the game and leave the Trinity and maybe a token light mech or two for the lolz.

Seriously, why don't certain lore-lovers GET IT?

- Clans vs. IS CANNOT be balanced without some sort of "quirks." Maybe you give the IS buffs, or the Clans nerfs, or some mix of the two, but those are your only option because, by Lore and Rules, Clans win every time. Ok, sure - I guess you could try the bit where a few Clans fight tons of IS, but good luck finding people to play the cannon fodder.

- "Bad designs should be bad (speaking of lore here), some designs were rushed, had poor design teams, lacked access to better facilities or other reasons. While other were better designed due whatever reasons."

I *love* it when people confuse a game for historical re-enactment of something that never even happened. Ok, so why exactly should the bad mechs exist in the game? Who’s going to play them? Who wants to get slaughtered because of Lore? Come on – THINK!

You cannot balance MWO based on tabletop. Tabletop is a game where everyone controlled multiple mechs in games that lasted a few hours. Nobody cares if the pilot of the cheap filler mech that dies on turn 2 had fun or not, and nobody has to first spend days grinding up their mechs to level them before being allowed to play at full power in the table top game. And that doesn’t even touch Clans, which were meant to be broken bad guys, not easy-win buttons for people who confuse being handed a win with skill. No, MWO is a shooter game where everyone grinds for the 1 mech they play per match, and must be balanced upon that, nothing else.

Edited by oldradagast, 14 September 2015 - 04:23 PM.

[Andi Nagasia]

because Timber God or go home?

really though its not that those mechs suck, and should suck,
its that in TT Shape doesnt matter, in an FPS shape matters alot,
so to make all mechs balanced we use Quirks to balance them,

[bad arcade kitty]

nope, sorry

weapon quirks should be limited but without them... balancing by mobility quirks is way worse
if i play a medium i don't want it turning like an assault either because my medium was quirk nerfed or because that assault was quirk buffed, i want it to be more agile than the assault; especially frustrating if mobility was one of the key features of that mech; btw they already mobility nerfed victor back then, did people like it? they eventually unnerfed it anyway so they only brought a lot of unneeded frustration to the players

infotech quirks cannot balance direct fire, they can only ruin missiles and frustrate the new players

armor quirks can balance some mechs, mostly assaults but those will still need weapon quirks, and if they overdo armor quirks... nobody will like unkillable 'raid bosses' with weak weapons too, neither to play as nor to play against (possibly nice to play with to use as a moving cover though, lol)

Edited by bad arcade kitty, 14 September 2015 - 05:24 PM.