92 replies to this topic

[MrJeffers]

Khobai, on 04 January 2016 - 11:02 AM, said:

This. Quirks shouldnt be used for weapon balance and quirks shouldnt determine the meta. The whole point of quirks is just to help out inferior mechs and differentiate similar mechs. Both IS and Clan mechs need quirks for that purpose.

Weapons need to be completely rebalanced without quirks.

The problem is that in MWO you can't balance weapons just on their weapon traits like heat and damage. You need quirks to balance out the weapons how they perform on a particular chassis. Otherwise we are back to the xx weapon is useless unless you are running it on the one or few chassis that it's optimal to run them on. Quirks open up the number of optimal chassis.

With quirks we could say have Clan ER Mediums being TT values of 7 damage and 5 for heat, instead of the 6 heat we have now, but only on the specific chassis that didn't create the need to put it at 6 heat in the first place. Likewise the IS medium laser could have stock values as well.

The problem with trying to achieve weapon balance with only the raw values is that to curtail the top end of the scale that is considered OP you are directly nerfing everything else that isn't at the top of the scale. It widens the gap between the useful mechs and the garbage ones and creates a lot more garbage then it removes OP. It just doesn't work, as we saw for two years of attempted balance. There a a larger percentage of usable chassis now than before the quirks, remove quirks and a lot of mechs go back into the dumpster.

Edited by MrJeffers, 04 January 2016 - 01:41 PM.

[Sandpit]

MrJeffers, on 04 January 2016 - 01:40 PM, said:

The problem is that in MWO you can't balance weapons just on their weapon traits like heat and damage. You need quirks to balance out the weapons how they perform on a particular chassis. Otherwise we are back to the xx weapon is useless unless you are running it on the one or few chassis that it's optimal to run them on. Quirks open up the number of optimal chassis.

With quirks we could say have Clan ER Mediums being TT values of 7 damage and 5 for heat, instead of the 6 heat we have now, but only on the specific chassis that didn't create the need to put it at 6 heat in the first place. Likewise the IS medium laser could have stock values as well.

The problem with trying to achieve weapon balance with only the raw values is that to curtail the top end of the scale that is considered OP you are directly nerfing everything else that isn't at the top of the scale. It widens the gap between the useful mechs and the garbage ones and creates a lot more garbage then it removes OP. It just doesn't work, as we saw for two years of attempted balance. There a a larger percentage of usable chassis now than before the quirks, remove quirks and a lot of mechs go back into the dumpster.

That's balancing a chassis, not weapons.

Shifting stats on a weapon for a single chassis does nothing for actual weapon balance and the deeper they go down taht rabiit hole the harder it's going to be to balance.

now instead of balancing say, a large laser
That larger laser has to be balanced in accordance with quirks for every single chassis. It's more time consuming in the long run and much more labor intensive and easier to miss QA mistakes which leads to further balancing issues.

Quirks are the "easy" way to balance, as such, in the long run it's going to become more complicated and harder to maintain because we'll always have an influx of new mechs and eventually we're going to have new weapons and tech as well.

It's just not a good way to balance weapons. It should be and only be to help give certain chassis more "flavor" and usefulness compared to the other variants. Using it to actually balance weapon and damage across the entire game is just asking for headaches and eventually that headache will grow beyond the ability to maintain.

[4EVR]

Khobai, on 04 January 2016 - 11:43 AM, said:

the real problem is pinpoint convergence. you shouldnt be able to fire all your weapons into a single hit location. that's what causes pretty much all of the game's problems.

That's a really interesting idea. Have they ever tried turning pinpoint convergence off? It would certainly be more fitting in terms of the lore.

With all the different weapon types, two tech trees, the quirk system, weird hardpoints, and different opinions on how the game should play, achieving complete balance is always going to be difficult. For example, should lights and mediums be strictly inferior to heavies and assaults in terms of actual damage potential, or should all mechs have similar damage potential if played according to their strengths? Or how do you balance a mech with terrible weapon mounts?

The nice thing with the quirks is that they make it easy to do small incremental changes. If you change many things at once it's impossible to tell what each change does.

[Sandpit]

4EVR, on 04 January 2016 - 02:26 PM, said:

That's a really interesting idea. Have they ever tried turning pinpoint convergence off? It would certainly be more fitting in terms of the lore.

With all the different weapon types, two tech trees, the quirk system, weird hardpoints, and different opinions on how the game should play, achieving complete balance is always going to be difficult. For example, should lights and mediums be strictly inferior to heavies and assaults in terms of actual damage potential, or should all mechs have similar damage potential if played according to their strengths? Or how do you balance a mech with terrible weapon mounts?

The nice thing with the quirks is that they make it easy to do small incremental changes. If you change many things at once it's impossible to tell what each change does.

PPD/FLD has been a "hot" topic since CB, PGI has never seemed concerned about it.

I agree with Khobai as well, but I don't think heat scale or loss of PPD individually would fix much overall, both of them though would create a much more diverse field of operations for the types of builds taken.

[C E Dwyer]

I don't chase quirks though

Only ones weapon wise I really pay attention to are ppc quirks bellow a certain speed and with the iffy hit detect the weapons more trouble than its worth

edit to add

futher more if the quirks are so high that only using those weapons and nothing else, means P.G.I got it wrong

Grid Iron comes to mind

Edited by Cathy, 04 January 2016 - 02:45 PM.

[The Lost Boy]

My Blr-2C has NEVER let me down. I have let it down a few times, but the 4 tons of sructure, twist, accell, deccel, energy range and duration bonuses WERE my determining factors in making it my new baby. Finding the mech that best suits your playstyle can be hard, but that one I love.

[Sandpit]

Cathy, on 04 January 2016 - 02:44 PM, said:

I don't chase quirks though

Only ones weapon wise I really pay attention to are ppc quirks bellow a certain speed and with the iffy hit detect the weapons more trouble than its worth

edit to add

futher more if the quirks are so high that only using those weapons and nothing else, means P.G.I got it wrong

Grid Iron comes to mind

same here
I use mechs I like, then I may build around quirks if it fits into the build I want on that mech. I have several that go way against the grain of its quirks, but work really well for me since it fits my playstyle better.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Sandpit, on 04 January 2016 - 02:33 PM, said:

but I don't think heat scale or loss of PPD individually would fix much overall

Let me ask this since this always comes up when discussing PPD. How much is acceptable PPD? I can tell you even 4 AC5s with convergence isn't enough to justify taking them on most mechs, and taking away convergence only further pushes the meta back towards massive big guns (Gauss/PPC/AC20s) simply because they are the only thing that can concentrate firepower. The problem with PPD alphas has always been the insane ones that utilize a significant number of low tonnage energy weapons that sacrifice heat efficiency for terrifying alphas. The problem hasn't been convergence it has always been about how to curb massive alphas possible thanks to low tonnage energy weapons.

If you want to make alphas less important you can do one of two things:

• Simply lower heat thresholds further so it is much easier to hit heat caps on high energy alphas (and maybe increase dissipation slightly so that energy boats aren't borked). A "proper" heat scale isn't really a balancing factor, it is more of an immersion factor.
  
• Increase the DPS on certain rapid fire oriented weapons even further, like the poor Dragon had not too long ago.

Just to put things in perspective though, I do want to point out that the magical 40 point PPFLD is equivalent to an AC20 round in TT, which imo isn't that bad, especially given what we have now.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 04 January 2016 - 03:14 PM.

[Mcgral18]

El Bandito, on 16 December 2015 - 02:39 AM, said:

My original meme.

Quirk Addiction.


.

Seems appropriate.


I don't like how PGI is trying to balance factions by quirks...while ignoring the worst mechs in the game, and significantly buffing the strongest of a subset...

[MrJeffers]

Sandpit, on 04 January 2016 - 02:18 PM, said:

That's balancing a chassis, not weapons.

Shifting stats on a weapon for a single chassis does nothing for actual weapon balance and the deeper they go down taht rabiit hole the harder it's going to be to balance.

now instead of balancing say, a large laser
That larger laser has to be balanced in accordance with quirks for every single chassis. It's more time consuming in the long run and much more labor intensive and easier to miss QA mistakes which leads to further balancing issues.

Weapon quirks on a chassis _do_ balance a weapon. And you have it backwards and then contradict yourself in the next statement.

A weapon quirk on a chassis only needs to be balanced though the permutations of what that quirk affects on that chassis.
For that large laser quirk on a chassis there are only x number of possible combinations, in most cases at worst a few dozen usable configurations.
Contrast that with changing the large laser heat value from stock of 7 to the current value of 8 and that must be tested on every chassis and every possible combination on all the chassis. Thousands, if not millions of possibilities. Much mroe difficult to test and so you don't. You only do the extreme worst edge cases and if you are nerfing them you are severely nerfing evertything less than those edge cases.

Sandpit, on 04 January 2016 - 02:18 PM, said:

Quirks are the "easy" way to balance, as such, in the long run it's going to become more complicated and harder to maintain because we'll always have an influx of new mechs and eventually we're going to have new weapons and tech as well.

It's just not a good way to balance weapons. It should be and only be to help give certain chassis more "flavor" and usefulness compared to the other variants. Using it to actually balance weapon and damage across the entire game is just asking for headaches and eventually that headache will grow beyond the ability to maintain.

Your right in the first part - weapon quirks are the easy way to balance because you can very directly and very minutely adjust the scope and effect of the changes.

The second part is just flat wrong, because for example making Gauss balanced based on the Dual Gauss builds (too long cooldown), nerfed it to near uselessness on everything else. Same thing with raising heat on Clan weapons because of the Timber and Stormcrow. That makes mechs like the Kit fox, Adder, Ice Ferret, Mist Lynx, etc all unable to effectively use them. I am not saying PGI is currently doing it right, but quirks are the right way to do it because you can't get that fine and targeted effect on balance without them.


EDIT: And in reality don't we really want balanced chassis, that all have working roles regardless of what weapons are used? If XXX mech is a valid usable chassis, what difference does it make if it's using ERLL, MPL, or an AC to achieve it?

EDIT2: Homework for you. Make MG's usable changing the base stats without quirks. Note it must be usable in configurations that work from only 1 installed, to having 6 installed and not be OP in any case.

Edited by MrJeffers, 04 January 2016 - 03:26 PM.

[Sandpit]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 04 January 2016 - 03:09 PM, said:

Let me ask this since this always comes up when discussing PPD. How much is acceptable PPD? I can tell you even 4 AC5s with convergence isn't enough to justify taking them on most mechs, and taking away convergence only further pushes the meta back towards massive big guns (Gauss/PPC/AC20s) simply because they are the only thing that can concentrate firepower. The problem with PPD alphas has always been the insane ones that utilize a significant number of low tonnage energy weapons that sacrifice heat efficiency for terrifying alphas. The problem hasn't been convergence it has always been about how to curb massive alphas possible thanks to low tonnage energy weapons.

If you want to make alphas less important you can do one of two things:

• Simply lower heat thresholds further so it is much easier to hit heat caps on high energy alphas (and maybe increase dissipation slightly so that energy boats aren't borked). A "proper" heat scale isn't really a balancing factor, it is more of an immersion factor.
  
• Increase the DPS on certain rapid fire oriented weapons even further, like the poor Dragon had not too long ago.

Just to put things in perspective though, I do want to point out that the magical 40 point PPFLD is equivalent to an AC20 round in TT, which imo isn't that bad, especially given what we have now.

PPD itself isn't the issue

The instant convergence of all weapons in all locations to a single pinpoint is the real issue.
There's a very simple way to fix it.
Each hardpoint location has a convergence point. Whether you add a visual reticle for that or not, give each one separate convergence timing based on the weapon in that slot. Then vary the speed at which that weapon "focuses" to a single point.

Example:
AC20 has a .25 second delay
AC10 has a .15 delay
AC5 has a .08 delay
AC2 has no delay

So if you rode out in a quad AC5 boat and placed 2 each in the side torsos, when you move to aim each side has that delay, if you fire before the weapon is on "place", your shot will be off just slightly. Just enough to cause it to hit a side torso or arm instead of everything instantly converging to the center torso.

It solves every one of those issues because it completely does away with instant convergence.

So, to me anyhow, it's not a matter of PPD being an issue, it's a matter of everything being able to instantaneously converge to the same spot.

You could also do it based on ranges. The higher the range of a weapon, the further its convergence point.

Eaxmple
AC5 has a "convergence range" of 300 meters. That means anything under 300 meters will still hit the target, just not in the exact same location if fired with another one simultaneously.

On the other side of that, have a max convergence point.
AC5 has a max convergence of 600 meters. That means anything beyond 600 meters and the bullets "criss cross" and hit different locations.

Think of it as this X
bottom part shows convergence trajectory, top part shows what happens when the bullets get past that center point where all points meet.

[LegendaryArticuno]

Is anyone even tracking quirks? I don't believe the wiki or metamechs list quirks

[Sandpit]

MrJeffers, on 04 January 2016 - 03:17 PM, said:

Weapon quirks on a chassis _do_ balance a weapon. And you have it backwards and then contradict yourself in the next statement.

A weapon quirk on a chassis only needs to be balanced though the permutations of what that quirk affects on that chassis.
For that large laser quirk on a chassis there are only x number of possible combinations, in most cases at worst a few dozen usable configurations.
Contrast that with changing the large laser heat value from stock of 7 to the current value of 8 and that must be tested on every chassis and every possible combination on all the chassis. Thousands, if not millions of possibilities. Much mroe difficult to test and so you don't. You only do the extreme worst edge cases and if you are nerfing them you are severely nerfing evertything less than those edge cases.




Your right in the first part - weapon quirks are the easy way to balance because you can very directly and very minutely adjust the scope and effect of the changes.

The second part is just flat wrong, because for example making Gauss balanced based on the Dual Gauss builds (too long cooldown), nerfed it to near uselessness on everything else. Same thing with raising heat on Clan weapons because of the Timber and Stormcrow. That makes mechs like the Kit fox, Adder, Ice Ferret, Mist Lynx, etc all unable to effectively use them. I am not saying PGI is currently doing it right, but quirks are the right way to do it because you can't get that fine and targeted effect on balance without them.


EDIT: And in reality don't we really want balanced chassis, that all have working roles regardless of what weapons are used? If XXX mech is a valid usable chassis, what difference does it make if it's using ERLL, MPL, or an AC to achieve it?

sorry
you're the one that has it backwards.

You can't balance entire weapon systems around individual mech chassis.
That's what they've been doing. How has that worked out so far?
It's an online game and balance will always be "shifty", but using quirks to balance is bad. It's also somewhat "lazy", in that there are and have been TONS of suggestions over the years that would work MUCH better than the current systems for weapon balance.

As of right now? Balance seems ot be in a good spot. Unfortunately that won't sustain because every time a new mech, chassis, variant, etc. is introduced the ENTIRE list of weapons it can carry has to be reevaluated after the fact.

It makes it completely impossible to balance without quirks. You can't look at a chassis and its hardpoints and figure out a good balance for it without knowing the quirks.

Then you have to decide, ok what quirks does this mech get?
Why?
How?

Each and every time. The chassis and mech itself should have next to no influence on the balance of the weapons. You're trying to balance weapons according to the chassis and, from past experience in gaming, that's quite simply going to lead to nothing but more band-aids, more headaches, and more complicated mechanics for players to figure out.

A player should be able to look at a large laser and know "it does x heat, x damage, and has x range" and that's it. Nothing more. Now a player, especially new players, have to do a LOT of math, research, etc. to determine the "optimal" mech for a specific weapon loadout beyond simply looking at it's hardpoints.

It's not problem for me.
Then again, I've been playing MWO for 3 years now, played the MW series for decades, and played the TT game for decades. I understand how all of it works because I know how the weapons themselves work and such.

A new player who's never seen Btech before?
Yea, just another hurdle and complication for them to learn about while still trying to learn all of the other nuances of MWO.

[Ted Wayz]

Mcgral18, on 04 January 2016 - 03:16 PM, said:

Seems appropriate.


I don't like how PGI is trying to balance factions by quirks...while ignoring the worst mechs in the game, and significantly buffing the strongest of a subset...

Surprised it took this long for this MWO meme to appear. But then again the MWO forums are...mediocre.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Sandpit, on 04 January 2016 - 03:23 PM, said:

The instant convergence of all weapons in all locations to a single pinpoint is the real issue.
There's a very simple way to fix it.

No, that's what I'm getting at with the PPD, removing instant convergence isn't a real issue. You aren't going to change the importance of alphas, just shifting the meta back towards carrying big guns which sure you minimize the alpha capacity, but doing it in a way that is much less elegant than limiting one of the biggest offenders through the Mechwarrior series, massive alphas thanks to low weight energy weapons and high heat caps.

Why create a new mechanic to do something that can be done by an existing one.
From there trying to balance rapid fire, burst fire, and alpha type weapons becomes a balance of risk vs reward and ensuring that you have a decent mixture of terrain across the maps because terrain tends to be a strong determining factor in how much risk is involved with each type. This is the major reason PPFLD ruled the day for so long until the Clans hit, the reward for burst fire and rapid fire weapons like lasers and lesser ACs were never justifiable unless using to supplement alphas.

Sandpit, on 04 January 2016 - 03:23 PM, said:

So if you rode out in a quad AC5 boat and placed 2 each in the side torsos, when you move to aim each side has that delay, if you fire before the weapon is on "place", your shot will be off just slightly.

You missed my point, my point is that even WITH pinpoint convergence, quad AC5s is meh at best, even with decent quirks.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 04 January 2016 - 03:42 PM.

[MrJeffers]

Sandpit, on 04 January 2016 - 03:31 PM, said:

sorry
you're the one that has it backwards.

You can't balance entire weapon systems around individual mech chassis.
That's what they've been doing. How has that worked out so far?

Sorry but no. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

And to flip your question back:
You can't balance entire weapon systems around individual weapon stats.
That's what they did for two years before quirks. How did that work out?

We are at the best balance point in the game *because* of quirks, and you even admit the first part but are ignoring the second.

[Mcgral18]

MrJeffers, on 04 January 2016 - 03:59 PM, said:

Sorry but no. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

And to flip your question back:
You can't balance entire weapon systems around individual weapon stats.
That's what they did for two years before quirks. How did that work out?

We are at the best balance point in the game *because* of quirks, and you even admit the first part but are ignoring the second.

Quirks have nothing to do with that. Buffing SRMs had something to do with that.

Weapon balance is still pretty ****, because, exclusively, lack of trying.
4th year anniversary for worthless Flamers.
1.5 years of 3 pronged attack on MGs.


You can easily balance weapon stats as a whole, then quirk mechs that will need it, either with weapon quirks (offset PoorDubs) or armour, agility, or other useful items.


Balancing the weapons themselves with quirks is one of the stupidest things PGI has tried to do in a long time.
To paraphrase: "When everyone has quirks, no one does"
Just change the base stats at that point.

[Sandpit]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 04 January 2016 - 03:36 PM, said:

removing instant convergence isn't a real issue.

we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
instant convergence and heat are the two underlying issues with weapon balance in MWO. They always have been.

[Sandpit]

MrJeffers, on 04 January 2016 - 03:59 PM, said:

Sorry but no. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

And to flip your question back:
You can't balance entire weapon systems around individual weapon stats.
That's what they did for two years before quirks. How did that work out?

We are at the best balance point in the game *because* of quirks, and you even admit the first part but are ignoring the second.

hmmm
I don't ever recall saying anything even remotely along the lines of "best balance point in the game"
I think what I actually said was

Sandpit, on 04 January 2016 - 03:31 PM, said:

As of right now? Balance seems ot be in a good spot. .

Can you not "translate" what I say and instead go with what was actually said instead?

Right now, balance seems like it's in a good spot.

That in no way even remotely implies that this is due to quirks
nor does it remotely imply "best"
nor does it show any kind of correlation or causality between quirks and balance.

Sorry, quirks are meant to balance a chassis, not an entire line of weapons.

A large laser is a large laser regardless of what mech it's dropped into. You don't go through and balance the large laser according to each individual mech.

I'll tell you what, if you really think that's the way to do it and that it's not going to lead to the issues I pointed out above (which has already come to pass), then I've got a challenge for you.

take 3 mechs and 3 variants for each mech
9 mechs total

you take 9 and i'll take the same 9
we'll advance them through 4 months of balance changes.

We'll see who's method is faster
Which method achieves a better balance
Which method is easier to adjust for game wide balancing (because remember, balanced on one mech doesn't equate to balance across the entire game)

When you're done pulling your hair out trying to get it done as fast as I'm able to with my method, I think you'll see the fallacy in trying to do it that way.

Now imagine doing it that way for over 100 mechs
every week
week in and week out
based on thousands of matches and the statistical data gathered from that.

You honestly truly believe that it's more cost effective, time efficient, and less labor intensive to do it with quirks or simply the weapon system as a whole regardless of what mech it's placed into?

[AztecD]

quirks should be based on the weapon,

Generic PPC - Base stats same

Donal[PPC] TharHes Industries +5% Recharge rate
Kinslaughter [PPC] Krupp Stellar Technologies Inc. +6% Range
Magna Hellstar[PPC] Aldis Industries -7% Heat Generation

Etc

but since MWO does not have any market, or planets or anything regarding travel and logistics, its a moot point