295 replies to this topic

[stealthraccoon]

I'm in agreement with Bishop, but then I'd also like to call for 3 months of mandatory stock mode.

Edited by stealthraccoon, 17 July 2016 - 02:25 PM.

[KHETTI]

If i still cared about this game i'd be totally on the "Remove quirks" bandwagon, i've been saying this for a long time.
Unfortunately MWO has had its day, PGI had their opportunities and squandered them.

[Wintersdark]

Mystere, on 17 July 2016 - 01:29 PM, said:

Sigh! Here's another example of exaggeration. A 10:1 performance ratio is in the realm of cannon fodder. 1.2:1? Not really

]

Sure, but as you alluded to later in your post, 10v12 doesn't mean clan mechs are 1.2x the strength of IS mechs.

Assymetric balance is extraordinary difficult, and to my knowledge has never been successfully implemented in a competitive PvP game.

10v12 is a solution that allows Clan mechs to be better than IS mechs, but it is not a solution that helps game balance. It would make balancing massively more difficult. Maybe you don't care, but PGI has to.

And given PGI's track record on balance in the much easier 12v12 setup... Well, I can't see that being a good road to travel.

[Mystere]

Wintersdark, on 17 July 2016 - 02:35 PM, said:

Sure, but as you alluded to later in your post, 10v12 doesn't mean clan mechs are 1.2x the strength of IS mechs.

Assymetric balance is extraordinary difficult, and to my knowledge has never been successfully implemented in a competitive PvP game.

10v12 is a solution that allows Clan mechs to be better than IS mechs, but it is not a solution that helps game balance. It would make balancing massively more difficult. Maybe you don't care, but PGI has to.

And given PGI's track record on balance in the much easier 12v12 setup... Well, I can't see that being a good road to travel.

Well, choosing the "safe" or "easy" route just ain't my style. <shrugs>

And considering PGI seems to consistently botch the "safe" or "easy" route anyway, maybe, just maybe, a new approach is warranted.

[FupDup]

Mystere, on 17 July 2016 - 02:42 PM, said:

Well, choosing the "safe" or "easy" route just ain't my style. <shrugs>

And considering PGI seems to consistently botch the "safe" or "easy" route anyway, maybe, just maybe, a new approach is warranted.

...So that they can botch it harder.

It would inevitably lead to either the Clams steamrolling IS or the IS steamrolling the Clams.

[Mystere]

FupDup, on 17 July 2016 - 02:46 PM, said:

...So that they can botch it harder.

It would inevitably lead to either the Clams steamrolling IS or the IS steamrolling the Clams.

But allegedly (i.e. I was not part of the internal testing), the IS did steamroll the Clans.

I say that's a compelling start that PGI should have worked on. But instead they seem to have been so blinded by their eSports aspirations.

Edited by Mystere, 17 July 2016 - 02:56 PM.

[Wintersdark]

FupDup, on 17 July 2016 - 02:46 PM, said:

...So that they can botch it harder.

It would inevitably lead to either the Clams steamrolling IS or the IS steamrolling the Clams.

This. Balance would be way, way harder to acheive, and you'd see way more steamrolls. Even if they got things dialed up tight, you'd see more battles end as steamrolls rather than tightly fought battles than you see now.

And really... PGI would fail. We all know they'd fail.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I'd love to try that. I would. I don't think steamrolls are bad either, personally, though I respect how others feel about them. But I think it would end very badly.

[Trauglodyte]

Deathlike, on 17 July 2016 - 09:40 AM, said:

I'm not a total fan of quirks (mostly because our balance overlord is incompetent), but do you guys really want to find out how bad many mechs are w/o their quirks?

Phoenix Hawk debuted with quirks - it's going to suck even more. Archers? They were already laughable and further dead. Commandos and Mist Lynx's? lol ok. Awesomes still have quirks, but they'll be forgotten just as well.

Some mechs will survive the such a thing, such as the Arctic Cheetah and many of the existing Clan mechs that have minimal quirks (Timberwolf will recover its status, only indirectly through everything sucking). Black Knights and Grasshoppers that are totally reliant on quirks wouldn't even be a thing.


While you can ask for said unquirkening, just remember that if you can imagine many of the mechs w/o quirks, you're going to cull most of them on the field. The mechs that weren't dependent on the quirks, well, they will generally be the standouts.

This isn't rocket science... it's the lack of foresight in the understanding and application of quirks (whether it be by others or our balance overlord) that causes people to lose sight of the dreadfully obvious... until you get smacked in the face of how badly you were reliant on those quirks. We'll still be back to claiming the Phoenix Hawk being the worst of the Mediums (unless the Vindicator wants to "outshine" it in its terrible state).

I'd argue that a lot of those mechs that would suck would be sucky because of bad weapon design, more than anything. I don't mind padding necessary hit locations (see Mist Lynx arms) but I think that, for the game to move forward, we need to turn everything back to pure vanilla and establish what the game needs to be moving forward. That means Power Draw, Role Warfare, Info Warfare, and an actual viable end game Faction Play that isn't the garbage we have today. I don't mind taking/defending a planetary gun emplacement but, tell me, how is that remotely all that you'd need to do to take a planet? Am I missing something? Anyway, that was a tangent, the point is that we need to take the kid gloves off of everything and figure out what the real balance is. I'm afraid that we have too many layers of band-aids that we've all lost sight of what a mech should and shouldn't do.

[Simbacca]

StaggerCheck, on 17 July 2016 - 07:34 AM, said:

You beat me to this post, Bishop. I was thinking the other day how, if all the Mechs are now scaled properly against each other, why it shouldn't be possible to do a few things...

• Have a design philosophy in place... Inner Sphere Mechs are rugged like an old '57 Chevy, Clan Mechs are precisely engineered machines, being newer, so are more fragile. Give Inner Sphere Mechs a pool of structure or armour quirks, based on weight. If a Mech needs help for certain sections, like the hump on a Hunchback or the arms on a Phoenix Hawk, that pool is concentrated on those areas. If a Mech is generally balanced, such as an Archer, those beneficial quirks are spread throughout the chassis evenly.
  
• If you are going to grant weapon quirks, base them on the original weapon load-out of the Mech. Bring back a little flavour and lore to the game and make the Mechs a little more distinctive.
  
• Signature weapon quirked locations to add to flavour and lore. If a Warhammer, for example, is going to be granted PPC quirks, associate those quirks with the arm hard-points. I wanna see Warhammers with PPCs in the arms, dammit, and I want PGI to incentivise their placement there in such a way as to make players want to put them there, instead of the torsos.

The current problem with the quirk system is every mech has so many quirks which creates its own problems, especially combined with weapons modules (which can be stacked on top of that). Mechs should have had no more than 5 quirks (or said mechs could have less than 5 quirks if they are powerful mechs already), and these quirks are tied to said mech variant's lore. Thus no more obtuse quirks which created monsters (at the time) such as the Thunderwub (Thunderbolt with all Med Pulse Lasers) - and this should prevent the need (or perceived need) to do massive quirk changes.

I would go even further and eliminate weapons modules. BUT replace said modules with "weapon brands". Brand A - default stats, Brand B for example 12% extra range but longer recharge time, etc. etc. This would help to tame power creep, and give a nod to lore (and improve immersion). As it stands now, one can: mechs quirk+range module+fresh rate module -- which exacerbates the underlying balancing problem.

[Deathlike]

Trauglodyte, on 17 July 2016 - 03:06 PM, said:

I'd argue that a lot of those mechs that would suck would be sucky because of bad weapon design, more than anything. I don't mind padding necessary hit locations (see Mist Lynx arms) but I think that, for the game to move forward, we need to turn everything back to pure vanilla and establish what the game needs to be moving forward. That means Power Draw, Role Warfare, Info Warfare, and an actual viable end game Faction Play that isn't the garbage we have today. I don't mind taking/defending a planetary gun emplacement but, tell me, how is that remotely all that you'd need to do to take a planet? Am I missing something? Anyway, that was a tangent, the point is that we need to take the kid gloves off of everything and figure out what the real balance is. I'm afraid that we have too many layers of band-aids that we've all lost sight of what a mech should and shouldn't do.

My issue is really incompetence that will occur... not so much the process.

PGI is exceptional in that field... like the previous patch.

[InspectorG]

Bishop Steiner, on 17 July 2016 - 10:54 AM, said:

You do realize I am not saying abolish quirks forever, but to acknowledge have a new baseline, and to use the opportunity to remove the power creep of the last year and requirk based off actual need and unbiased info?

New 'Baseline(s)'.

A new crit system would be needed to make weapons like MG, LBX, LRMs, Flamers would be needed.

Skill Tree could suffice for most agility quirks. But some mechs should get agility and weapon quirks just for variant differentiation. Think Cicadas and Hunchbacks.

Role quirks for the main styles of play in MWo, brawl, 500m, long range, knife, harass, jumpsnipe, lazervomit, dakka, hot map, cold map, open map, crowded map...etc.

Lights need attention post rescale.
IMO, volume was the wrong metric but it is what it is. Agility buff for all lights(quirks?)
Agility nerf for most Heavies/Assaults. Linear speed kept.
10 engine heat sink MUST should be discarded for lights. Hurts the under-30 tonners.

IMO:

I would USE the T1 - T5? mech INBALANCE to create a system of costs on using based on tier.(for CW)
Cooldown timer could be used on T1s making them more rare and costly. T3s would be doing most of the work for FW.

This way T1 mechs get used sparingly for important drops and T3s are used a lot for most drops. T4+ would have nice incentives like x3 rewards and such.

I have ideas for CW tied into this but PGI could NOT balance the mechs and use that in a larger scheme. Solo could be tied in as well if a simple 'tax-system' was implemented. but thats a whole other story for CW.

[Kaeb Odellas]

My issues with the current quirk issue is that quirk lists are just ridiculously long, and that they're used to balance IS vs Clan tech. Quirks should be more unique to the chassis, not damn near omni-present.

[MischiefSC]

Mechwarrior1441491, on 17 July 2016 - 01:57 PM, said:

We played the game without quirks for years. Quirks saved the stale game play of this game and got rarely used mechs back on the field. Why on earth do we have to go back to closed beta to understand what it would be like without quirks? After mastering a mech I rarely kept more than a single mech. There was no point. So many variants were useless as there was ALWAYS the best out of the bunch you would play. Anything else and it would be a handicap.

I'm not saying mechs don't need quirks.

I'm saying at this point though there have been countless weapon and mech rebalance changes since closed Beta and we don't even know what is and isn't good without quirks now. How many IS energy boats do you see that are not quirked? Are IS lasers in general (LPL aside) even that good without quirks? How 'tanky' are IS mechs with STD engines without an extra 10-20 points of structure in most locations?

At this point the only mechs that get run are mechs with good quirks. That's it. If it's not quirked, it's crap is the perception. So we have the exact same problem just in reverse.

Again, all for quirks on under-performing mechs. However I'm of the opinion that the best mechs, T1 mechs, should be unquirked - as T1. So quirks should bring T5s and T4s up to the T1 range. A quirked mech should still generally be considered inferior to an unquirked mech because the quirks are there just to bring sub-par mechs up close to good mech status.

That would be ideal.

[Trauglodyte]

Wintersdark, on 17 July 2016 - 02:35 PM, said:

Sure, but as you alluded to later in your post, 10v12 doesn't mean clan mechs are 1.2x the strength of IS mechs.

Assymetric balance is extraordinary difficult, and to my knowledge has never been successfully implemented in a competitive PvP game.

10v12 is a solution that allows Clan mechs to be better than IS mechs, but it is not a solution that helps game balance. It would make balancing massively more difficult. Maybe you don't care, but PGI has to.

And given PGI's track record on balance in the much easier 12v12 setup... Well, I can't see that being a good road to travel.

Plus, let's not forget how much power is gained in a landslide win. 12 v 10 means that you've got 2 extra people, supposedly, focusing on a single target making it, in reality, 3 to 1. That 1 is going to drop like a rock which then puts you at 12 v 9, so on and so forth. There isn't any level of reasonable quirks that would allow 12 v 10 to work. You'd have to increase armor and structure by another 30-50% and then your 1v1 battles would be awful.

Deathlike, on 17 July 2016 - 03:16 PM, said:

My issue is really incompetence that will occur... not so much the process.

PGI is exceptional in that field... like the previous patch.

You're not wrong. I'm eager to see what happens with Power Draw (aka, GH 2.0). My personal opinion is that the cool downs on ACs bigger than the AC/2 need to be made longer and Lasers need to have their beam duration increased. I only say that because TTK does need to be reduced but SRMs/LRMs aren't what you're seeing decimate people anymore. If my guess about Power Draw is right, people will be moving to more AC heavy mechs but Lasers will still be powerful (ie. 3x Large Lasers is still going to be viabe as is 6x Medium/5x Medium Pulse). If they make that adjustment and help out LRMs - oh, for the love of the gods please make that happen, then you could start adding health padding stats.

As far as weapon quirks, I want quirks to be stock build specific. If you meet all of the build requirements, you get a set of bonus quirks. THIS is what quirks needed to be from the jump. We can ghetto omni-mech the **** out of anything but, in doing so, we've gone way out of the realm of what the mechs were designed to do. Bring that back, along with Faction Play with some immersion, purpose, and pace (with a new MM and a non-**** PSR), and we're cooking with gas!

Edited by Trauglodyte, 17 July 2016 - 04:57 PM.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

One of the biggest setback's of this game... is PGI trying to focus so much on E-sports.

E-Sports, is something that should have come naturally to MWO, not be forced in like a square peg into a round hole.

There's a reason the old Battletech pods had tournaments, and that's because there was a true skill to being able to manage all the weaponry, all the internal components in those pods.

In MW2,3, and 4, e-sports popped up in the way of planetary leagues and the like...

But MWO's failing has been PGI's huge asperations towards a crowd that would rather play CS:GO or StarCraft II or League.

For MWO to have a real successful "E-Sport" scene, you need to change how the game is played. Focus on objective matches, rounds with respawns, and likely, lock down players to use only "tournament official" variants and builds.

Because then, everyone ends up 100% on the same level, and it becomes less about the "meta" and more about pilot's skills in a given mech.

Combine that with unoptimized mechs, and remove the pilot skill tree from play, remove quirks. And you begin to see the true "Skill" that E-sports should engender.

[Simbacca]

Kaeb Odellas, on 17 July 2016 - 03:51 PM, said:

My issues with the current quirk issue is that quirk lists are just ridiculously long, and that they're used to balance IS vs Clan tech. Quirks should be more unique to the chassis, not damn near omni-present.

Hence my suggestion - a max of 5 quirks for a mech. Less if it already powerful. And linking those quirks to the mech variant's lore. Such a system keeps things simple, and logical.

What has happened time and again - is that quirks having played a significant part of meta - or the running of specific chassis with specific load outs.

[Deathlike]

Simbacca, on 17 July 2016 - 05:42 PM, said:

Hence my suggestion - a max of 5 quirks for a mech. Less if it already powerful. And linking those quirks to the mech variant's lore. Such a system keeps things simple, and logical.

There are some mechs that need an insane amount of quirks... like the Lolcust or Mist Lynx to actually compete.

While you could argue this makes sense for bigger mechs, there are plenty of "smaller mechs" (some of the existing oversized mediums) with a vast list of deficiencies (not just Lights, but there are a fair # of mediums that need it).

It would never work the way that you'd like.

Edited by Deathlike, 17 July 2016 - 05:46 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Deathlike, on 17 July 2016 - 05:46 PM, said:

There are some mechs that need an insane amount of quirks... like the Lolcust or Mist Lynx to actually compete.

While you could argue this makes sense for bigger mechs, there are plenty of &quot;smaller mechs&quot; (some of the existing oversized mediums) with a vast list of deficiencies (not just Lights, but there are a fair # of mediums that need it).

It would never work the way that you'd like.

But perhaps they'd need LESS insane levels of quirks, if there weren't so many other overquirked mechs about. Hence my desire to baseline everything for a bit, and see just how badly the weakest of the weak need to be worked to compete against Tier 2s.

Certainly don't need everything trying to be tier 1, again

[MischiefSC]

Deathlike, on 17 July 2016 - 05:46 PM, said:

There are some mechs that need an insane amount of quirks... like the Lolcust or Mist Lynx to actually compete.

While you could argue this makes sense for bigger mechs, there are plenty of "smaller mechs" (some of the existing oversized mediums) with a vast list of deficiencies (not just Lights, but there are a fair # of mediums that need it).

It would never work the way that you'd like.

It would if we had Info Warfare. You tie doritos to significant tactical advantages in weapon performance (range, accuracy, damage, armor penetration, the size of your e-peen, payout for kills, don't care so long as it's motivational) and you create space for lights that isn't 'go kill that guy 4x your size'.

That's what I did like about the laser range thing, all other issues aside. This was back when Jenners were horrible (again) but I was rocking face with one because I could pop out at 270m, get a lock, shoot and fade before they could effectively return fire. My lasers were hitting for full damage theirs were suffering a 30% damage reduction in the same bracket because I could lock faster, deploy and avoid. Same with run N gun.

While I agree the exact application was iffy the concept worked well. Sensor range, locks, target speed all tied into direct weapon performance. This created synergy for lights not just as scouts but in combat - they moved faster, locked targets first and further and in good hands could leverage that to make up for their frailty.

The concept is an excellent one as a mechanic. I get that some people dislike it but creating that space for balance where someone either in a light that's going to be able to 'shoot first/more accurately' or someone setting up their attack or focusing fire better creates a balance mechanic space that would do a lot of good for the game.

[Pjwned]

This is what I've been saying to do for a while now, and all of my posts bitching about quirks have been leading in this direction. Even I don't like a lot of the quirk changes for individual mechs (although a number of them are still justified even in this shitfest system, e.g Kodiaks), but the problem is that quirks as a whole are a disaster and I've made that clear more often than not in the process of bitching about it.

The problem is, removing all of the quirks would require some seriously aggressive weapon rebalancing and reworking to compensate, mostly for Inner Sphere but also Clans, and we can plainly see how reluctant PGI is to do anything of the sort.