295 replies to this topic

[Wintersdark]

Karl Streiger, on 19 July 2016 - 02:16 AM, said:

consider the performance again - add hardpoint location based weapon quirks - creating a kind of weapons form different manufacturers (large laser for right arm of Thunderbolt)

Leaving fluff aside, location locked hardpoints prevents a lot of issues. The old ERPPC Thunderbolt for example: if it only got the -crazylotsofheat% quirk to an ERPPC in its arm, it would have had flavour but not been a ridiculous monster with multiple ERPPC's.

This is often the issue: a small quirk doesn't do a lot, but a large quirk encourages boating to milk more from it.

[Mavairo]

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.


*Procurator Derek: Yes, I am sure I could have posted this in a different, "appropriate" Section of the Forum. Where it would have 5 views, 1 like, and zero comments. We post here specifically for the "DISCUSSION" part of General Discussion, sir. Just saying!

Here's the problem with that philosophy.. we already know there are much better chassis than others, due to their geometry, and hard point totals. We all know without quirks a Stalker is >>> Atlas any day of the week.
We also know Direwolf >>>> Stalker any day of the week. Leaving mister Fatty to cry in the corner and kill himself.

Just for a couple of examples.

Dragons? do you really think that a Dragon really needs to be UnQuirked to see "how it shakes out" against the Mad Cat? Cauldron Born? Even the lol Mad Dog?

Centurion vs Storm Crow anyone? Actually ANY Medium vs Storm Crow?

Victor vs.. Battlemaster? We all know who will win that one hands down.
Awesome ... well.. Awesome vs anything, ever.

The list is endless.

The real problem stems from the fact that PGI refuses to acknowledge that the weapon dmg values from TT are meant to be taken into effect over 10 second intervals. They also, refuse (and it might be too late since the care bear community that is the MWO community) to implement any kind of Armor Mechanics, and any kind of variance in the player's aim.
Until these things are done..nothing PGI does is going to fix the game's core underlying problems.

[Tarl Cabot]

Pariah Devalis, on 19 July 2016 - 05:43 AM, said:

Unlock internal structure. That alone would fix the Gargoyle, mostly fix the Summoner, and improve the Mad Dog. It would have exactly zero impact on the Timberwolf, Ebon Jaguar, Stormcrow, or Arctic Cheetah.

The biggest fix would be to allow it to temporarily raise an arm higher than its crotch to fire those arm-mounted weapons. The only way to unlock the internal structure with the way it is currently setup is to allow a player to purchase a Clan Battlemech (Omni) with stock pods, giving it the inability to switch out omni pods.

Buy a mech pack......

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 19 July 2016 - 03:03 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Mavairo, on 19 July 2016 - 02:58 PM, said:

The real problem stems from the fact that PGI refuses to acknowledge that the weapon dmg values from TT are meant to be taken into effect over 10 second intervals. They also, refuse (and it might be too late since the care bear community that is the MWO community) to implement any kind of Armor Mechanics, and any kind of variance in the player's aim.
Until these things are done..nothing PGI does is going to fix the game's core underlying problems.

We may know the broad strokes, but no we don't know by what degrees things are separated. And as long as everything is already covered in miles of bandaids, we never will, really. THAT is the point.

[HammerMaster]

Poor initial implementaion of weapons, scale and hit boxes can not be fixed with pgi band aids: ghost heat, quirks. Fix ppcs not quirks. Fix lrms not counters. Targeting as good as C3. ECM as good as null signature. Convergence. 10 v 12 not balancing. Kill quirks. For all the $ I spent for what I had hoped it would be? Take it all down. 2 months if need be. To the trash with this e sport drivel. Quirks have spiraled out of control. Make Mech Warrior great again.

Edited by HammerMaster, 19 July 2016 - 03:36 PM.

[Mavairo]

Bishop Steiner, on 19 July 2016 - 03:05 PM, said:

We may know the broad strokes, but no we don't know by what degrees things are separated. And as long as everything is already covered in miles of bandaids, we never will, really. THAT is the point.

We already know the impact. Remember the clan mechs? They pretty much up and replaced the IS rivals out right.
Remember before the quirks? The stalker's introduction? And the instant dearth of non DDCs in the ques? (and the only reason they were taken at all was due to ECM)
Other mechs, were never on par with other mechs in the class..even back when there were two heavies, the Catapult vastly out stripped the Dragon.

We know what the degrees are between the good mechs, and the frankly badly implemented ones are... Roflstomp. That's what they are separated by, a gulf so wide that they aren't even in the same time zone.

[Y E O N N E]

Pariah Devalis, on 19 July 2016 - 08:56 AM, said:

I've seen worse things out there. Gauss ST will be the first to go, then the crippling heat will mitigate the ERPPC and their shitreg. It really doesn't faze me.

The heat isn't crippling, not at all. There's a reason why 2xPPC+Gauss has made something of a comeback at the high end, and its name is Kodiak. Even post-nerf. You have to minimize exposure because if you don't, you will get punched square in the face by 50 points.

[Bishop Steiner]

Mavairo, on 19 July 2016 - 04:21 PM, said:

We already know the impact. Remember the clan mechs? They pretty much up and replaced the IS rivals out right.
Remember before the quirks? The stalker's introduction? And the instant dearth of non DDCs in the ques? (and the only reason they were taken at all was due to ECM)
Other mechs, were never on par with other mechs in the class..even back when there were two heavies, the Catapult vastly out stripped the Dragon.

We know what the degrees are between the good mechs, and the frankly badly implemented ones are... Roflstomp. That's what they are separated by, a gulf so wide that they aren't even in the same time zone.

Actually, you see that's why we don't. We have not been able to gauge the impact of the rescales, the current weapon balance, etc.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

When quirks were first announced, I thought it was a great idea to balance chassis in need, unfortunately the implementation was too heavy handed and many of the decisions were arbitrary and self-serving (input game from individuals rather than metrics and had a bias for personal build preferences rather than battletech lore).
I am all for removing quirks completely. However, I still think they can be a balancing tool, primarily in regards to addressing model and hit box discrepancies, and only after a significant vetting period.

[HammerMaster]

Need stop the insanity meme.

[Razorfish]

Not a fan of this idea.

In my opinion, as a general rule if you did this Clan mech would be better than IS mechs.

[Bishop Steiner]

Razorfish, on 19 July 2016 - 06:45 PM, said:

Not a fan of this idea.

In my opinion, as a general rule if you did this Clan mech would be better than IS mechs.

and they might be. But if you read beyond the title, that is addressed.

[Wintersdark]

Agent 0 Fortune, on 19 July 2016 - 04:42 PM, said:

When quirks were first announced, I thought it was a great idea to balance chassis in need, unfortunately the implementation was too heavy handed and many of the decisions were arbitrary and self-serving (input game from individuals rather than metrics and had a bias for personal build preferences rather than battletech lore).
I am all for removing quirks completely. However, I still think they can be a balancing tool, primarily in regards to addressing model and hit box discrepancies, and only after a significant vetting period.

Yup. They're a useful tool, but they've been applied so inconsistently and with crazy heavy handedness in places - while being utterly neglected in others, even very "sore thumb" places like the Vindicator...

My understanding is that there's one guy at a time responsible for quirks. I forget who was last doing it, but he did share some info on the forums (mostly pertaining to what he had to work with (or more accurately what he didn't have, as he lacked the ability to create new quirk types)...

But, despite his well meaning and generally decent work, there where so many really puzzling choices.

Realistically, as there is no chance at all that PGI will start fresh with quirks, I don't really even know how they should address things moving forward - not something that I think has both a reasonable chance of being done at all AND has reasonable odds of not being mangled.

[Bishop Steiner]

Wintersdark, on 19 July 2016 - 06:52 PM, said:

Yup. They're a useful tool, but they've been applied so inconsistently and with crazy heavy handedness in places - while being utterly neglected in others, even very "sore thumb" places like the Vindicator...

My understanding is that there's one guy at a time responsible for quirks. I forget who was last doing it, but he did share some info on the forums (mostly pertaining to what he had to work with (or more accurately what he didn't have, as he lacked the ability to create new quirk types)...

But, despite his well meaning and generally decent work, there where so many really puzzling choices.

Realistically, as there is no chance at all that PGI will start fresh with quirks, I don't really even know how they should address things moving forward - not something that I think has both a reasonable chance of being done at all AND has reasonable odds of not being mangled.

I won't ever be a liason, community manager type, etc. But I would, in a heartbeat work with their quirk guy to nuke and start quirks over, rein em in and give them their proper lore flavor. Which of course will piss some people off...but geuss what? Someone will always be pissed off, and for all the claims of altruism some of our competitive brethren have made, too often they have revealed their desire to push metas, or simply piss on the IP for "gameplay bruh", instead of finding that middle ground.

[Y E O N N E]

Bishop Steiner, on 19 July 2016 - 06:56 PM, said:

I won't ever be a liason, community manager type, etc. But I would, in a heartbeat work with their quirk guy to nuke and start quirks over, rein em in and give them their proper lore flavor. Which of course will piss some people off...but geuss what? Someone will always be pissed off, and for all the claims of altruism some of our competitive brethren have made, too often they have revealed their desire to push metas, or simply piss on the IP for "gameplay bruh", instead of finding that middle ground.

It is entirely possible to have some lore flavor and good gameplay.

I would love some LB-10X quirks on my MAD-5M and ERPPC quirks on my MAD-5D...

[Bishop Steiner]

Yeonne Greene, on 19 July 2016 - 07:11 PM, said:

It is entirely possible to have some lore flavor and good gameplay.

I would love some LB-10X quirks on my MAD-5M and ERPPC quirks on my MAD-5D...

why have erppc quirks? PPC quirks cover all forms of ppcs already.

But Marauders should have better than average twist rate (part of their lore design was the new special arm design that gave unprecedented range) and arm yaw and pitch. And definitely more lore based weapon quirks per model.... though how heavy would depend on where the chassis itself really sits.

One reason I want to strip quirks is once we establish the Tier 1s, then we know just how much we need to buff up to, realistically, and we don't have Tier 1s on steroids on top of their natural design, like we do now. Would probably see a LOT of mechs lose a lot of structure quirks.

[Y E O N N E]

Bishop Steiner, on 19 July 2016 - 07:17 PM, said:

why have erppc quirks? PPC quirks cover all forms of ppcs already.

But Marauders should have better than average twist rate (part of their lore design was the new special arm design that gave unprecedented range) and arm yaw and pitch. And definitely more lore based weapon quirks per model.... though how heavy would depend on where the chassis itself really sits.

One reason I want to strip quirks is once we establish the Tier 1s, then we know just how much we need to buff up to, realistically, and we don't have Tier 1s on steroids on top of their natural design, like we do now. Would probably see a LOT of mechs lose a lot of structure quirks.

Because in lore, the 5D carries ER PPCs and it differentiates the 'Mech from the 3R, which carries normal PPCs.

[Bishop Steiner]

Yeonne Greene, on 19 July 2016 - 07:22 PM, said:

Because in lore, the 5D carries ER PPCs and it differentiates the 'Mech from the 3R, which carries normal PPCs.

or they could just fix PPCs period and be done with it.....

[Y E O N N E]

Bishop Steiner, on 19 July 2016 - 07:23 PM, said:

or they could just fix PPCs period and be done with it.....

That's the understood, preferred suggestion.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Yeonne Greene, on 19 July 2016 - 07:33 PM, said:

That's the understood, preferred suggestion.

Though there is less to fix about them given the current meta. cERPPs are surprisingly strong currently.