196 replies to this topic

[Almond Brown]

Bud Crue, on 06 March 2017 - 09:57 AM, said:

Yes. After the hubbub of the mechcon presentation which stated "quirks removed" Russ subsequently tweeted that under performing mechs like "his Dragon" would have base line performance values to aid them. "Base line values" were in subsequent tweets referred to as "quirks". And yet, when the PTS was proposed nearly ever mech in need of such base line help were nerfed by removal of most or all offensive quirks. The skills tree announcment also stated as one of four goals (diversity and choice being the basis of the first three) that PGI intended to dramatically decrease the use of quirks.

With that as the history, what do you think there intentions are here? I can only note that their official posts are all consistent in the stated goal of reducing or eliminating quirks. Only Russ's tweets suggest some sort of "help" but that was from tweets in December and early January. As far as the "official" record is concerned PGI is silent on any supposed future re-buffing of the mechs they nerfed via the skills tree and PTS. Maybe they will fix this. But their stated goals and conduct since mechcon suggests that they have no intention of doing such a thing.

You presume it was doable before the new Skill system was in place and any Testing done. Stripping **** out is easy. Subsequently figuring out what and who (which exact Mechs) gets that "help" after the Skills system is in Test/Play may not be as easy. But if that wondrous theory, that a mere 15 minutes with the XML files would solve it all, still somehow prevails in your view, then I guess it is recommended to just keep railing against the man. That is also known to be very easy.

[Bud Crue]

Almond Brown, on 07 March 2017 - 11:43 AM, said:

You presume it was doable before the new Skill system was in place and any Testing done. Stripping **** out is easy. Subsequently figuring out what and who (which exact Mechs) gets that "help" after the Skills system is in Test/Play may not be as easy. But if that wondrous theory, that a mere 15 minutes with the XML files would solve it all, still somehow prevails in your view, then I guess it is recommended to just keep railing against the man. That is also known to be very easy.

Fight the power baby. All we can do is look at their own precedents, and their own statements. Everything they have written and nearly every historical precedent points to the nerfing of under performing mechs for no particular reason other than to remove quirks. The PTS makes that stated intention and history a reality. If my pointing that out is "railing against the man", then yup, I will keep on railing. That is after all kinda what the PTS is for. I gotta give "the man" his due here.

[WolvesX]

Thank you for posting more examples!

[oldradagast]

Bud Crue, on 07 March 2017 - 04:12 AM, said:

I don't really believe any of the above, but patterns of behavior form patterns for a reason. What's PGI's reason for ther pattern? To make an engaging immersive Mechwarrior game that they advertised all those years ago and that we are still waiting for, or is it to make as much money off this run at the franchise and move on to another project? What's the pattern of behavior suggest to you?

Hats off.

It is a valid theory. MWO at this point may as well just be a play-test bed for MW5. And your evidence is sound, although not conclusive. One cannot deny that these big, random changes that show no thought whatsoever for MWO do make far more sense if one instead considers that they don't care about MWO at all provided they can still sell a few more mech packs and use it to get things in order for MW5.

[Deathlike]

Here's a simple question you have to ask yourself...

If there IS a good Inner Sphere mech in this game, does it have to have those quirks to stay competitive? (Hint: Such mechs rarely exist and require those quirks to compete.)

For Clan mechs that are good, how many of them are not quirked or quirked negatively?
(Hint: Hunchback-IIC, Kodiak-3, Night Gyr to name a few are in this category.)

When you can answer them honestly (like, able to compare mechs properly and not make garbage builds), then you'll understand the baseline problems with PGI's attempt to balance.

Three things come to mind:
1) No testing
2) No baseline (or a poor understanding or a terrible baseline decision made)
3) No brainpower used in making the tree (like, if I diagram how one would optimize the tree, the differences would be startling)

I believe you can still actually min-max the v3 tree and it's still pro-Clans in the end.

[Oberost]

Deathlike, on 07 March 2017 - 07:24 PM, said:

Here's a simple question you have to ask yourself...

If there IS a good Inner Sphere mech in this game, does it have to have those quirks to stay competitive? (Hint: Such mechs rarely exist and require those quirks to compete.)

For Clan mechs that are good, how many of them are not quirked or quirked negatively?
(Hint: Hunchback-IIC, Kodiak-3, Night Gyr to name a few are in this category.)

When you can answer them honestly (like, able to compare mechs properly and not make garbage builds), then you'll understand the baseline problems with PGI's attempt to balance.

Three things come to mind:
1) No testing
2) No baseline (or a poor understanding or a terrible baseline decision made)
3) No brainpower used in making the tree (like, if I diagram how one would optimize the tree, the differences would be startling)

I believe you can still actually min-max the v3 tree and it's still pro-Clans in the end.

TBH, the whole thing seems to me the work of an intern in his spare time...

[Kmieciu]

Oberost, on 07 March 2017 - 11:10 PM, said:

TBH, the whole thing seems to me the work of an intern in his spare time...

My favourite part was how they preemptively nerfed the velocity quirks by up to 30% because the skill tree gave a 20% bonus that they later nerfed to 10% :-)

I think that intern was actually working on quirk changes during overtime while preparing for his exams.

Edited by Kmieciu, 07 March 2017 - 11:25 PM.

[WolvesX]

Deathlike, on 07 March 2017 - 07:24 PM, said:

Here's a simple question you have to ask yourself...

If there IS a good Inner Sphere mech in this game, does it have to have those quirks to stay competitive? (Hint: Such mechs rarely exist and require those quirks to compete.)

For Clan mechs that are good, how many of them are not quirked or quirked negatively?
(Hint: Hunchback-IIC, Kodiak-3, Night Gyr to name a few are in this category.)

When you can answer them honestly (like, able to compare mechs properly and not make garbage builds), then you'll understand the baseline problems with PGI's attempt to balance.

Three things come to mind:
1) No testing
2) No baseline (or a poor understanding or a terrible baseline decision made)
3) No brainpower used in making the tree (like, if I diagram how one would optimize the tree, the differences would be startling)

I believe you can still actually min-max the v3 tree and it's still pro-Clans in the end.

MUch better worded then my post.

Kmieciu, on 07 March 2017 - 11:24 PM, said:

My favourite part was how they preemptively nerfed the velocity quirks by up to 30% because the skill tree gave a 20% bonus that they later nerfed to 10% :-)

I think that intern was actually working on quirk changes during overtime while preparing for his exams.

Yeah, we can assume that now much thought went into those changes.

[Duke Nedo]

I'd just like to stress again how important this is. I have like 200 mechs, I want to be able to play them all, not only for lolz.

#pgiplz:

• Hands off all quirks except some agility quirks!
  
• The agility quirks you can reduce by a small amount are the ones aimed at builds using STD engines, or in the odd case a small XLs
  
• All agility quirks that are aimed at builds using large IS XL engines needs to stay untouched, or in some cases increased to avoid slow twisting IS XL death traps!
  
• Other durability quirks needs to stay, and in some cases be increased if engine decoupling causes lowered twist speed and this is not compensated for by quirks, in combination with an IS XL (again).
  
• In general, IS needs a small buff compared to clan mechs because they started off behind and are not being helped by the squirks-tree. Rather the opposite.

[silberfuchs]

Unfortunately no news today in the update about the state of quirks. This has me worried.

[WolvesX]

silberfuchs, on 08 March 2017 - 04:50 PM, said:

Unfortunately no news today in the update about the state of quirks. This has me worried.

A tiny comment on the biggest feedback thread would be nice would it?

Something like: "We are aware." or something.

[Marius Evander]

parts of IS and clan skill trees are different values arent they?

yes removing underperforming mech quirks is dumb before we've had a chance to test they haven't magically become overpowered with their quirks in new system.

[oldradagast]

WolvesX, on 09 March 2017 - 03:24 AM, said:

A tiny comment on the biggest feedback thread would be nice would it?

Something like: "We are aware." or something.

Have you checked Twitter? Because, obviously, a game company should ignore its own forums and website and instead spew important info over some drek social media tool not remotely intended for lengthy conversation or details regarding massive and potentially game-killing changes to their core product.

[Monkey Lover]

Kind of looks like they have no plans to adjust any of these quirks. This reminds me of Russ's 70+ mech range nerf where he smacked down the worst mechs in the game more than the most OP mechs causing the problems.


This is to bad most of my mechs now will not be usable. I guess it will save me a lot of money not mastering them lol.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 09 March 2017 - 10:20 PM.

[SuperFunkTron]

Monkey Lover, on 09 March 2017 - 09:37 PM, said:

Kind of looks like they have no plans to adjust any of these quirks. This reminds me of Russ's 70+ mech range nerf where he smacked down the worst mechs in the game more than the most OP mechs causing the problems.


This is to bad most of my mechs now will not be usable. I guess it will save me a lot of money not mastering them lol.

Just in case you missed it:

Node Changes
- Minor node rearrangements throughout multiple branches.
- A handful of value changes through the Firepower, Survival, and Mobility trees.
- Survival tree has been expanded to allow for two things:
- Armor Hardening, Skeletal Density, and Reinforced Casing node counts expanded allowing for higher levels of investments within the tree.
- Node layout has been greatly altered to give more player choice between paths allowing for more heavy investment in Armor Hardening versus more investment in Skeletal Density.

Mobility System Changes:
- Have further tuned a series of lights and 'Mechs defined by mobility to further increase their base mobility attributes.




They actually listed some of the changes they intend to make.

Edited by SuperFunkTron, 10 March 2017 - 09:07 AM.

[Deltree Zero]

Yes. They listed some changes. Changes made after pts was closed, which are in no way detailed for us to understand before it just goes live.

Isn't it a bit unsettling that we aren't allowed to experience the final version for ourselves in pts before it is released?

Am I the only one who finds it extremely strange that pgi gets a terrible idea and forces it on us, then allows us to give input, then releases something which barely resembles that input and says "thanks for all your awesome super useful feedback! based on all your ideas we have made massive change X!" and then massive change X is the new reality?

I believe it is because they dont care about fun, the battletech franchise or even the people who play their games. They need or want money. I think they failed at this game and are hoping to get out of the whole F2P thing with MW5. Too bad they cant understand they can have money AND deliver fun at the same time.

I think they gave up. That is why IS\clan balance is still broken, planets have zero strategic value, power creep mech pack debauch continues, total joke drinking session town hall meetings happen, we see a complete lack of PGI interest in company forums, see PGI only communicating with players who blindly support their psycotic design choices on twitter, player numbers have dropped down to just over 1000 on steam, The One Bucket exists, complete stripping of house\clan identity is tolerated, we saw basically a removal of the invasion map content from FP... I could go on and on and on and on and on.....

It makes me sick.

[WolvesX]

Ignoring all the feedbak here is a terrible move.

Not a peep about these issue! Wow!

[SuperFunkTron]

WolvesX, on 10 March 2017 - 05:40 PM, said:

Ignoring all the feedbak here is a terrible move.

Not a peep about these issue! Wow!

I got in about half an hour late, but they were in the middle of discussing their reasoning for handling the adjustments as they did and said that they would continue to monitor and adjust accordingly. Or did I catch something completely unrelated?

Edited by SuperFunkTron, 10 March 2017 - 05:42 PM.

[WolvesX]

SuperFunkTron, on 10 March 2017 - 05:42 PM, said:

I got in about half an hour late, but they were in the middle of discussing their reasoning for handling the adjustments as they did and said that they would continue to monitor and adjust accordingly. Or did I catch something completely unrelated?

Yes, you are correct in some way, they discussed the general changes...

They want to remove quirks and bring mech back to a "baseline", well if you do that you are nerfing underperformers.

Ergo, they are ignoring the feedback.

[SuperFunkTron]

WolvesX, on 10 March 2017 - 05:59 PM, said:

Yes, you are correct in some way, they discussed the general changes...

They want to remove quirks and bring mech back to a "baseline", well if you do that you are nerfing underperformers.

Ergo, they are ignoring the feedback.

Ok, so now that we have confirmed that was the topic, I do recall them saying that they wanted the baseline to see how the mechs behave and will adjust accordingly in the future as the game is a constant development process. They are clearly aware of the issue and them not addressing it how you want does not mean it was considered.
That doesn't sounds like they ignored it so much as they are waiting for live system data to adjust in relation to a baseline value with fewer quirks rather than using quirked values as a start point.