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[Clint Steel]

So after hearing of all the changes coming, (Rescale of all the Mechs, Changes/removal of Ghost heat, an updated/new game engine), I'm a little concerned.

Even without these huge changes, lately I have felt that the rules and stats(quirks) in the game have been too fickle. This causes several issues, from deciding which Mech to buy, which faction to play, and even taking you further out of being immersed, as the physics and reasoning of the world is in constant unrealistic flux.

A bit of an aside:
{ I personally like to think of quirks as something that was designed into each mech to be special, as an excuse for whatever negative aspects hold the Mech back. For example, the Dragon has only a few hard points and a giant CT, making it a very poor Mech in the game (and likely real life if it existed), but we can think some reasoning as to why such a design decisions were chosen, such as the fewer hardpoints allowing for better reloading mechanisms, therefore lower cooldown between shots, and the size of the CT can allow for more agility and speed out of its engine. But if the quirks constantly have drastic changes, this kind of justification doesn't work. }

This isn't to say I'm not excited for the proposed changes. Infact I really look forward to what they can do for the game. However, I don't think they should be fed out piecemeal into the game, where each change will require balances and changes so drastic that there will need to be a whole rework of the quirk systems, and other balancing decisions added or undone (ie. clan weapon ranges/durations) after each one.

My suggestion is to turn the Public Test Server on, in a more permanent basis. In order to keep the populations up there will need to be rewards, which as I understand comes with some technical difficulty in syncing earned money from the PTS to your normal account.

A solution to this is using a system that rather than injecting money directly into your account, they give you a "prize" for each match similar to how Holiday Events did it (Stockings, Trick-or Treats). Prizes could be a fixed 100k C-bills, or random, but either way this would greatly encourage participation, which is needed in order to have a population big enough to actually Test the changes being implemented.


TLDR:
The idea is to keep major changes on the PTS so that the Actual game isn't in a constant state of flux. I would suggest that both the Rescale and the removal of Ghost Heat be balanced at the same time on the PTS, before their release. Otherwise we will see quirks and other stats bouncing all over, as these large changes are implemented one at a time, requiring rebalancing after each one.