Jman5, on 06 December 2016 - 09:36 AM, said:
Now imagine you're trying to balance the Atlas D-DC for the new skill tree system using existing Quirks as a model. Ok the Atlas currently gets 10% energy and 5% ballistic/missile cooldown quirks. So you divide 5 or 10 by 5 and bake it into the 5 cooldown skill levels.
Now PGI has two choices here. They can go strictly by quirks so energy cooldown skills go up in increments of 4.5% (2 + 2.5) and ballistics go up by 3.5% (1 + 2.5). Alternatively they can just come up with one value, say 10% and so every cooldown skill goes up by 4.5%. The alternative approach would homogenize things more, but you wouldn't be favoring one weapon type over another.
Yeah, the second approach would be mercifully simpler for everybody, especially in communicating that a given 'Mech needed help. It would also spare PGI an unrealistic level of work in fine-tuning skill bonuses, because then they'd have to do it for every single weapon system on the 'Mech, and not just the ones they wanted to highlight or use to reflect a niche or lore.
The specific open-ended quirking I had in mind for the Atlas, though, was survival. It's percentage-based, so 50%. Obviously, you can't allow just any 'Mech to reach that, so you have to scale somehow; and we return to your alternatives. Or, as you rephrased, cook in those numbers. But then there are quirks to add to quirks. Is it worth upending everything to have a hybrid system?
To reiterate with what I closed with, I think a lot of "quirk fatigue" comes from how varied they are. I remember when you commented on variant-specific survival quirks during the infowar PTS. Was it really worthwhile to have one variant beefy and one vanilla and one in-between? Probably not, because it was confusing and potentially misleading ("Crap, I thought all Hunchbacks had structure, wasted MC"), as you explained. Similarly, the effort to quirk every last thing goes beyond the purpose of quirks, which is to balance between chassis and variants.
I really think it'd be easier if structure/armor were just part of the 'Mech — hey, it has a huge butt, so these are the numbers. And then you have energy, missile, ballistic, movement, jumping. Simple headers. Roll in all the good qualities so it's always a plus. There are still tons of factors, from silhouette to hitboxes to hardpoints to quirk degrees for 'Mechs to be differentiated.
Viktor Drake, on 05 December 2016 - 04:37 PM, said:
The question then is how long before that Atlas will gain enough SP's to offset its initial disadvantage? 10 SP,? 30 SP? 50 SP? 75 SP? Even 10 SP will require about 66 matches if the Altas can earn 1500 XP a match. 50 SP will require over 300. That is a hell of alot of time playing a gimped mech.
Exactly. I think that hems PGI into the "cooked in" solution, which immediately alloys the design into an equally labor-intensive hybrid.
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