295 replies to this topic

[Tarl Cabot]

To nuke all quirks would not just be the weapon and the structural quirks but also the acceleration, deceleration and turn rate quirks. Those quirks that were added when the SKILL tree was nuked, leaving just the roaches, nor are they locked but being modified with the other quirks types.

[Mycrus]

Bishop Steiner, on 17 July 2016 - 07:22 AM, said:

As the title says.

We've rescaled the entire Mech line up. But we've limped along on layers of quirks bandaided over layers of quirks, no one honestly has a clue what any mech's relative truly value is. PGIs usual "tweak a handful here, a handful there" approach actually tends to exacerbate this.

And players are so addicted to the quirk-crack, that this often causes bigger concerns than geometry, hardpoints, hitboxes.

So, IMO, this is the time to go cold turkey.

Nuke all the quirks. Take us back to day zero, whatever. Let's get a feel for what each mech can do. Remember when the Tier 1 Metamechs DIDN'T GET ANY QUIRKS AT ALL, or possibly, we even saw the need for a few with some negative quirks, here or there? Before Powercreep turned into the (predicted) Powersprint?

Top tier mechs shouldn't have quirks at all. Everything below should get minor quirks that address otherwise unaddressable deficiencies, or occasionally, add lore/fluff favor (in which case they should be veeeery minor). But one really needs to see them "naked", as it were first, to know really what the new balance of power, post rescale is.

Now, I know this is going to confuse some of you. "How can I argue and be salty about the upcoming quirk changes on some posts, yet be pushing for a total reset here?" It's actually very very simple. In those posts, I am arguing about the MWO game we actually have, NOW, where the top tier mechs are uberquirked, and we are oddly stripping quirks of second tier mechs, instead. This post is about what SHOULD be done.

Pgi knows exactly what is best for you... just sit there and continue playing the same minimally viable robbit arena shooter like the surat you are..

[Bishop Steiner]

Cathy, on 17 July 2016 - 07:57 AM, said:

I'd agree, but some weapons would need a baseline buff before it happened.

ER/PPC's speed
LB10 LRM15 LRM20 damage spread reduced.

currently LRM20 LB10 are useless as are LRM15 unless you take artemis and then still less cost effective than LRM10.

ER/PPC's are only worth taking on mechs where speed is buffed currently

Streak 2 also need a change, to make them useful.

This change of course means your throwing FW under the bus, but shrugs, currently its not worth spending the effort it requires to play it properly

The hope would be that the naked telemetry from a quirkless game would expose the inadequate weapons and force them to address the stupid decisions, yes.

Mycrus, on 17 July 2016 - 08:14 AM, said:

Pgi knows exactly what is best for you... just sit there and continue playing the same minimally viable robbit arena shooter like the surat you are..

No. you.

[Stone Wall]

One thing this game is missing hard that MW3 had down was the differences in mechs. Alot of these mechs feel the same. This is coming from someone who's played MW3, MW4, and MWO. This game needs variety among mechs, weapons, and game options. But that's just my opinion. I know I was blown up in my own thread about having more options for gameplay like respawning. If the game's going to be just destruction derby with 1 life, I don't see that lasting as long as MW3.

[Mycrus]

Bishop Steiner, on 17 July 2016 - 08:15 AM, said:

The hope would be that the naked telemetry from a quirkless game would expose the inadequate weapons and force them to address the stupid decisions, yes.


No. you.

No amount of telemetry will save you from the trebuchet_meta™

[Wintersdark]

Bishop Steiner, on 17 July 2016 - 08:11 AM, said:

I would be fine with that, too.

If it affected everyone as you suggested, absolutely. Most mechs aren't dancers.

Quote

(Instead of this odd mix of haves and have nots)

You know, this is really my biggest issue with PGI's quirking. They always miss mechs, or make really baffling choices as to which will have and which will have not.

You'll have two comparable assaults, one with massive agility quirks and one with none, where there wasn't a balance disparity before nor apparently any (lore or otherwise) reason for it, just because Dartboard of Balance or simple silly human error; but either way it won't be addressed, resulting in mechs that are bad purely because they appear to have been disregarded entirely.

[kapusta11]

Defends KDK3 quirks
Complains about power creep

Go figure

[Cybrid 0x0t2md2w]

they should totally nuke all quirks

they're doing a bad job with them

[FupDup]

Stone Wall, on 17 July 2016 - 08:18 AM, said:

One thing this game is missing hard that MW3 had down was the differences in mechs. Alot of these mechs feel the same. This is coming from someone who's played MW3, MW4, and MWO. This game needs variety among mechs, weapons, and game options. But that's just my opinion. I know I was blown up in my own thread about having more options for gameplay like respawning. If the game's going to be just destruction derby with 1 life, I don't see that lasting as long as MW3.

Uh...MW3 had the worst mech variety of any MW game ever. The mechlab there had no engine limits and no hardpoints, effectively making every mech capable of fielding identical loadouts at identical speeds. The only differences between mechs in MW3 were tonnage and hitboxes for the most part.

[Tordin]

Im totally for your idea Bishop, at least something similar. But we should be aware that blindsided elitist, ultracompetive and crutch players will want to wipe the floor with PGI and Russ if they even dared spitting out a statement like:

"We are gonna start completely from scratch, in the next patch we will remove all quirks and adjust thereafter. Starting with having the patch effects last a couple of months to get enough data on who needs specific quirks and so on"

Its just something I dread to see. Blind doofuses, refusing to let go of their crutch quirks because they cant handle defeat! I bet they will threat or scare PGI to never attempt such "sabotage" again
Even more important to make something like that come to fruitition, to pucnh such players in their comfort zone. Gonna lose a few players, but it will be a rough cure for the betterment of the community and PGI as a whole.

[FupDup]

Tordin, on 17 July 2016 - 08:57 AM, said:

Im totally for your idea Bishop, at least something similar. But we should be aware that blindsided elitist, ultracompetive and crutch players will want to wipe the floor with PGI and Russ if they even dared spitting out a statement like:

"We are gonna start completely from scratch, in the next patch we will remove all quirks and adjust thereafter. Starting with having the patch effects last a couple of months to get enough data on who needs specific quirks and so on"

Its just something I dread to see. Blind doofuses, refusing to let go of their crutch quirks because they cant handle defeat! I bet they will threat or scare PGI to never attempt such "sabotage" again
Even more important to make something like that come to fruitition, to pucnh such players in their comfort zone. Gonna lose a few players, but it will be a rough cure for the betterment of the community and PGI as a whole.

Actually, the "crutch" players would switch to Clan mechs for a while, just like they did before quirks were added.

[Stone Wall]

FupDup, on 17 July 2016 - 08:46 AM, said:

Uh...MW3 had the worst mech variety of any MW game ever. The mechlab there had no engine limits and no hardpoints, effectively making every mech capable of fielding identical loadouts at identical speeds. The only differences between mechs in MW3 were tonnage and hitboxes for the most part.

Mechlab wise you could take anything you wanted. I loved that. If anyone wanted only one load out, that's their fault/decision.

I'm talking about the piloting of the mechs. You could really feel the difference between a Blackhawk and a Thor or a Puma and a Daishi. Some mechs were agile, some felt like tanks, some could torso twist, some could not. In MWO, it feels like you are either short or tall, fast or slow.

Edited by Stone Wall, 17 July 2016 - 09:02 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Tarl Cabot, on 17 July 2016 - 08:14 AM, said:

To nuke all quirks would not just be the weapon and the structural quirks but also the acceleration, deceleration and turn rate quirks. Those quirks that were added when the SKILL tree was nuked, leaving just the roaches, nor are they locked but being modified with the other quirks types.

well aware.

And since they had to add mobility back to everything via quirks aside from a few hard screwed have nots... well, that shoudl end, too.

FupDup, on 17 July 2016 - 09:00 AM, said:

Actually, the "crutch" players would switch to Clan mechs for a while, just like they did before quirks were added.

quite likely...but much vitriol would be spent, too. I have popcorn.

[Mystere]

Monkey Lover, on 17 July 2016 - 07:52 AM, said:

Not many people would be cool with using junker mechs even if the game was balanced.

For crying out loud, you make it sound like Clan Mechs would be 10000X more capable. <shrugs>

It's exaggerations like this that make me really believe that at least half of the problems with MWO is indeed traceable back to the player base.

[EvilCow]

A "slippery slope", my definition of quirks back when this thing was suggested, of course it would going to create more problems than it solved.

And everything because we couldn't have sized slots, which would have contributed give variants more flavor and help with general balance too.

Now we are where many beta testers predicted: community at war over IS/Clans balance, pointless changes after pointless changes, mechs that look all the same because there is only so much you can do with 3 kind of slots.

A real reset would be required, the rescaling has been already a huge rework and a step in the right direction, now it is time to undo the stubborn choices that are driving this game down.

- Remove quirks.
- Redefine the working of some weapon classes: LRMs, LBXs, UACs.
- Balance with weapon stats FIRST then try other solutions.
- Drop the IS/Balance thing and balance games by numbers / tonnage.

Posting is wasted time, I know.

[Yosharian]

The entire point of having someone intelligent in charge of quirks is that they don't need to do this because they have a solid understanding of all mechs.

Instead we have people that don't seem to be able to determine what quirks should be until they're out in the wild.

As an example, see what happened with the KDK quirks. Everyone who's skilled at the game took one look at the KDK-3 and knew its quirks were too strong.

[Tordin]

FupDup, on 17 July 2016 - 09:00 AM, said:

Actually, the "crutch" players would switch to Clan mechs for a while, just like they did before quirks were added.

Well, sure they some would switch to clan mechs. BUT. There could be a few solutions, just some that came rapidly to my mind, good or not.

1: Only give IS mechs structure and or mobility quirks, NO weapon based ones. To balance things out. Clan shouldnt have any quirks either. Though those who really suffer from noquirks should be considered though.

2: Revise and rebalance weapons, clan vs IS. Base values. The example being PPC as someone have noticed. With the engine we have now, server lag etc. The PPC should have their velocity increased into the base value of +50 - 60 % for example.

3: Modules should replace quirks. Could for example be limited in use. Weapon Modules being placed "inside" a placed weapon, Mech modules could be placed inside proper parts of the mech.

Examples. Your technicians have fine-tuned your large lasers with more focused lens tech (I cant remember how lasers work in the lore)increasing their long range capabilities with 10%. For radar deprivation, that module could be placed in the greyed out, hard locked slot in the mechs head. Just some examples. Think of how you place heatsinks into engine slots for IS mechs.

Now, I dont know how many slots each weapon/ hard locked parts and equipments should have. With only one, it could force a choice and also make a revisited class/ role based skill tree very valuable and interesting.

Edited by Tordin, 17 July 2016 - 09:20 AM.

[Mystere]

FupDup, on 17 July 2016 - 09:00 AM, said:

Actually, the "crutch" players would switch to Clan mechs for a while, just like they did before quirks were added.

So let them. It's not as if that would be a major problem .... unless of course the player base is indeed plagued by ePeen conscious crutch players.

[FupDup]

Mystere, on 17 July 2016 - 09:20 AM, said:

So let them. It's not as if that would be a major problem .... unless of course the player base is indeed plagued by ePeen conscious crutch players.

Basically, the point I was trying to make is that the daily perception of what a "crutch" mech is can change on a daily basis, and it basically creates a whack-a-mole type of chase. Whack down one mole and another one will take its place, and thus is the reason that it's really a losing battle to try to "stamp out all the crutches."

[Moldur]

Quirks at this point are like playing a game of jenga without being able to see half of the tower of blocks. Wiping quirks, then reintroducing them based off unquirked performance would be time consuming, but I think the end result would be worth it.