114 replies to this topic

[Bud Crue]

Kroete, on 22 September 2017 - 03:06 AM, said:

Quirks are great to catch the money from all the metawhores and tryhards.
You dont even need to make a new model, just change a simple xml.

Even if they recognize that you milk them and change the xml every month,
they will still run after the newest fotm/meta ...

And then the new p2w mechs,
you cant easy nerf them when they get out for cbills if they dont have quirks.

And please dont talk about balance in a f2p game that makes money by selling new toys and not only cosmetics!
Balance would make pgi lose most of its income ...

If quirks are designed to "catch the money from the metawhores..." shouldn't the mechs at the top (i.e. The Meta mechs that the metawhores presumably play) be the most ladened with quirks? And/or shouldn't PGI be regularly adding quirks to the best mechs to encourage their purchase by said metawhores, or adding quirks to a massive degree to not currently meta mechs so as to tempt the metawhores to buy new things?

I mean, I don't think any of the metawhores folks are looking at the armor boost to the Archers in the latest patch and thinking "Oh ya got me PGI! Now I have to buy Archers because those new quirks are irresistable, and as a metawhores I must buy mechs with lots of quirks!" Nor do they look at the existing super quirked mechs and buy those for their tryhard adventures. I mean I know some "tryhard" competitive folks and not one of them has ever confidentially whispered to me anything along the lines of "pst, hey, wanna know the best mechs in the game? Check out the Atlas RS. Just look at those quirks! I'm tellin ya dude, just follow the quirks and ya can't go wrong!" Or suggested that competitive play is dominated by paragons of quirkdom like Cataphracts and Panthers, ya know?

It just seems to me that these metawhore and tryhard sorts of folks are typically running clan mechs that have the potential for massive alphas or DPS, and almost always on mechs with high hard points. If such mechs have quirks they are minimal or incidental to the "meta" builds.

Anyway, I'm legit curious to know how quirks are used by PGI to attract the money of such folks, cuz I just don't see it. To my way of thinking it isn't the metawhores and tryhards that are lured in by quirks it is the casuals and loreholes. Especially the later, as quirks seem to be used imho to keep crap mechs viable (not competitive, merely viable), and thus such lore minded folks can be confident that no mater how bad their mixed build, POS, TT mech is, PGI will make sure that they can play it with at least a chance of it not being totally outclassed by the actual meta mechs and players.

Edited by Bud Crue, 22 September 2017 - 03:42 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

I am a fan of not removing quirks, but adding a completey new type:

Dynamic Quirks:
You run a laserboat? Congrats, thanks for playing the meta, have fun!
You run a "bracket build" with SRms, LRMs and Lasers? Whoa, that would normally suck, but here, you get a free +10 % range, +20 % ammo and +10 % heat reduction and +10 % projectile velocity. Have fun!

[Bud Crue]

MustrumRidcully, on 22 September 2017 - 03:47 AM, said:

I am a fan of not removing quirks, but adding a completey new type:

Dynamic Quirks:
You run a laserboat? Congrats, thanks for playing the meta, have fun!
You run a "bracket build" with SRms, LRMs and Lasers? Whoa, that would normally suck, but here, you get a free +10 % range, +20 % ammo and +10 % heat reduction and +10 % projectile velocity. Have fun!

This would require PGI to recognize, understand and then act upon the following:
1) That not all weapons are created equal. This is a concept that they have never recognized, and in fact by words and deeds proven unwilling to even consider the possibility of (See the clan normal ACs vs others as an example).
2) That PGI recognizes a meta. While in somewhat contradiction to point 1) they do occasional have such a recognition, but unfortunately they are almost always late to that recognition. See for example all the damage done to UACs when the Kodiak-3 inspired UAC spam, had already been replaced by Gauss/PPC, see then the Gauss/PPC GH nerf, when Gauss Vomit had already replaced that. Hell, see the Warhawk nerf...after all this time (we constantly monitor real in game data and balance accordingly my ***). PGI doesn't drive the meta, they react to it, and often incredibly slowly.

So fo them to dynamically quirks things, I think would be a mess. They'd probably have to do a hot patch daily just to keep up, and that's assuming they actually were paying sufficiently close attention in the first place to keep up, but which history shows they cannot and do not.

Edited by Bud Crue, 22 September 2017 - 04:04 AM.

[Wildstreak]

Source Mystic, on 20 September 2017 - 09:39 AM, said:

I have been playing this game for almost 4 years .

Really?
Because your account says you joined in 2015, 2 years ago.
So if you played for 4 years, then this must be an alt that begs the question WHY NOT JUST POST UNDER YOUR PRIMARY ACCOUNT?

[Athom83]

Wildstreak, on 22 September 2017 - 04:19 AM, said:

Really?
Because your account says you joined in 2015, 2 years ago.
So if you played for 4 years, then this must be an alt that begs the question WHY NOT JUST POST UNDER YOUR PRIMARY ACCOUNT?

Because that is his primary and he is lying. Also, the forums rules forbid posting with alt accounts so if, and that is a big if, that is an alt then he could be banned/suspended/whatever.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Stinger554, on 21 September 2017 - 05:47 PM, said:

Which is why the electronics part has to be comparable to having pure firepower. Hence again balancing act.

Sure, but the problem is lights themselves are already lacking in firepower and yet are the ones that are generally the focus of EW roles. This is problematic, especially in the rare cases where a heavier mech can carry the same EW equipment.

Stinger554, on 21 September 2017 - 05:47 PM, said:

I don't know how it worked in TT and quite frankly I don't care. Using one of Khobai's examples creating ghost signals on the radar causing confusion and disarray is a decent idea on how EW could be implemented or even completely canceling the radar while with in a certain range.

Completely canceling radar was pretty much done once, it was stupid because of the mechanics (only hard counters, easy to use because it is a passive effect, requires a mech to be close, etc). Maybe if you could do this with different NARC ammo types and such that it didn't last long? Even then though, in comp it would never be used because it is a pointless addition except for making brawling stronger (and brawling require ECM pretty much).

This is my main point of contention, most of these EW concepts are NOT thought out in how they interact in high level gameplay. If you aren't thinking about that then you aren't actually adding depth to the game, you are adding illusions of choice (simply put, adding more things that a new player has to learn are pointless and bad to get to a high level).

Stinger554, on 21 September 2017 - 05:47 PM, said:

Did I say it was going to be simple anywhere? I'm well aware that it's a more complex delicate process, but does that mean we should just give up and never even think about implementing a more extensive EW suite for the game? Hint the correct answer is no.

Not a good comparison as balancing Clans to IS in the way that PGI wants is a failed endeavor before it even began. As for the easier said than done BS refer to the paragraph above. Saying it's hard isn't a reason for not doing it or even attempting it.

No, connected to my above response, I'm saying these have to be A LOT more thought out than the crap that often gets passed around on these forums because most of them are ill-conceived or not really understanding of what IS important and what are fun mechanics (thinks that are both fun to use and have good counter play). This isn't something that you should haphazardly add in like we had with ECM when it was introduced (pretty much radar and IFF worthless in range or something like that, and combined with auto-CT streaks made the ECM arms race a very much real thing).

[Stinger554]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 22 September 2017 - 07:42 AM, said:

Sure, but the problem is lights themselves are already lacking in firepower and yet are the ones that are generally the focus of EW roles. This is problematic, especially in the rare cases where a heavier mech can carry the same EW equipment.

Again Ideally it should be a trade off EW stuff for less firepower within the classes of mechs. IE An atlas with EW equipment wouldn't have as much firepower as one that didn't; same with the other mechs.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 22 September 2017 - 07:42 AM, said:

Completely canceling radar was pretty much done once, it was stupid because of the mechanics (only hard counters, easy to use because it is a passive effect, requires a mech to be close, etc). Maybe if you could do this with different NARC ammo types and such that it didn't last long? Even then though, in comp it would never be used because it is a pointless addition except for making brawling stronger (and brawling require ECM pretty much).

I didn't know it was tried before but that's the point of these discussions to identify problems like the ones you've brought up and possibly find solutions to them. For the NARC ammo types that's a good idea although I was thinking along the lines of a separate system rather than a tie it in to an existing one.

Clearing radar was just a random example of EW it wasn't meant to be something explicit because as you said higher tier players would be able to work with out it. How about something that completely turns off IFF so that all mechs no longer have a targeting triangle above their heads that'd have more impact imo.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 22 September 2017 - 07:42 AM, said:

This is my main point of contention, most of these EW concepts are NOT thought out in how they interact in high level gameplay. If you aren't thinking about that then you aren't actually adding depth to the game, you are adding illusions of choice (simply put, adding more things that a new player has to learn are pointless and bad to get to a high level).


No, connected to my above response, I'm saying these have to be A LOT more thought out than the crap that often gets passed around on these forums because most of them are ill-conceived or not really understanding of what IS important and what are fun mechanics (thinks that are both fun to use and have good counter play). This isn't something that you should haphazardly add in like we had with ECM when it was introduced (pretty much radar and IFF worthless in range or something like that, and combined with auto-CT streaks made the ECM arms race a very much real thing).

So you're not against adding EW to the game just against how some people are suggesting implementations of it? The point of discussion in regards to EW is to add that huge amount of thought behind the idea because one person or even group of people isn't going to be able to account for all or even most of the different variables involved with EW.

Edited by Stinger554, 22 September 2017 - 10:08 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Stinger554, on 22 September 2017 - 10:07 AM, said:

Again Ideally it should be a trade off EW stuff for less firepower within the classes of mechs. IE An atlas with EW equipment wouldn't have as much firepower as one that didn't; same with the other mechs.

Sure, but the difference between firepower is going to be different across classes because tonnage of this equipment does not scale between classes so the benefit of such equipment either needs to scale or other factors need to be in place to affect that otherwise lights get screwed the hardest by this (which is why I dislike the Raven example).

Stinger554, on 22 September 2017 - 10:07 AM, said:

I didn't know it was tried before but that's the point of these discussions to identify problems like the ones you've brought up and possibly find solutions to them. For the NARC ammo types that's a good idea although I was thinking along the lines of a separate system rather than a tie it in to an existing one.

I mean either way, having some piece of equipment that requires active play rather than promoting passive usage is the point here. Having some passive field that follows a mech around just doesn't make sense for most EW stuff (honestly it should be more like armor against EW weapons like AMS is against missiles or something like that).

Stinger554, on 22 September 2017 - 10:07 AM, said:

Clearing radar was just a random example of EW it wasn't meant to be something explicit because as you said higher tier players would be able to work with out it. How about something that completely turns off IFF so that all mechs no longer have a targeting triangle above their heads that'd have more impact imo.

It would, but more for brawling because at range things like thermal are infinitely more useful than radar for most maps that promote long range play. At that point though, removing doritos of non-friendlies in a brawl is absurd so that is a bad idea (imagine brawls in QP, which is a place where you get punished for friendly damage).

Stinger554, on 22 September 2017 - 10:07 AM, said:

So you're not against adding EW to the game just against how some people are suggesting implementations of it? The point of discussion in regards to EW is to add that huge amount of thought behind the idea because one person or even group of people isn't going to be able to account for all or even most of the different variables involved with EW.

Sure, I'm not against EW as a thing, it just requires more thought than most people put into things particularly if people are willing to borrow ideas from other games (IW and EW kinda work hand in hand here, for example the ability to no where mechs are through LoS would be incredibly useful for mechs with lesser firepower as would immunity to this detection). The interactions and implications of those interactions need to be more thoroughly thought out and need to not be bound by lore mechanics because lore has a high likelihood of not making sense in the context of a team-based FPS.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 22 September 2017 - 10:23 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Bud Crue, on 22 September 2017 - 04:02 AM, said:

This would require PGI to recognize, understand and then act upon the following:
1) That not all weapons are created equal. This is a concept that they have never recognized, and in fact by words and deeds proven unwilling to even consider the possibility of (See the clan normal ACs vs others as an example).
2) That PGI recognizes a meta. While in somewhat contradiction to point 1) they do occasional have such a recognition, but unfortunately they are almost always late to that recognition. See for example all the damage done to UACs when the Kodiak-3 inspired UAC spam, had already been replaced by Gauss/PPC, see then the Gauss/PPC GH nerf, when Gauss Vomit had already replaced that. Hell, see the Warhawk nerf...after all this time (we constantly monitor real in game data and balance accordingly my ***). PGI doesn't drive the meta, they react to it, and often incredibly slowly.

So fo them to dynamically quirks things, I think would be a mess. They'd probably have to do a hot patch daily just to keep up, and that's assuming they actually were paying sufficiently close attention in the first place to keep up, but which history shows they cannot and do not.

It depends on how far they go, but really:
Boats are the meta in every Mechwarrior game, and even in the Battletech universe itself. Having all weapons identical is just very practical. It even happened in real life - Naval Vessels used to be equipped with different sized guns, but they moved to identical ones because it made life for the crews easier, since the firing solutions are basically identical for all weapons, and you don'T have to try to figure out whether the shot that missed was a shell from the big or the medium gun.
So on that level - Mixed weapon builds will always need help to become competitive.

[Chados]

Losing quirks would terminate 98% of the mechs in game. I've done plenty of drops where mine was the only IS mech on either side in a QP drop. I've done plenty where none of the mechs in the drop were IS at all.

There are plenty of mechs whose geometry require defensive quirks to be minimally viable. See, e.g., Uziels, Urbanmechs, and Vindicators. Unquirked, they all would evaporate immediately on first contact. Uziels pop like balloons as soon as any 30 tonner opens up on them, second alpha and they're cored ST/CT even with the slight structure boost they got in the last patch. They're just too big to fulfill the role PGI wants them to fulfill-they need a 25% reduction in scale to fill that niche because they are just too easy to hit. Absent that, they need armor and they need it bad. Look at the average Vindicator. Post-Civil War, with their defensive quirks, they actually merit their Lore as being Liao's standard trooper mech, because they can hang somewhat in a fight now. And without defensive quirks, the life expectancy of the average Urbanmech pilot would be 35 seconds. My KDR in the R63 dates from before all the quirks the mech got, I'm only now beginning to run it again. After 95 drops, it stands at 0.15. Because in the pre-massive-armor-boost era, an Urbanmech with anything even resembling an autocannon build was lunchmeat because of their lack of mobility. Now you can pack a rotary 5 and a couple small lasers and hold your own.

Look at the average Marauder. There are two reasons that the only one you see anymore is the 3R. Because it has structure for days, and three ballistic mounts. In Lore, the MAD is a PPC mech. How many 3R Marauders do you see running PPCs? Almost none, they all have three AC5-class guns and minimal energy weapons. Without quirks, MAD ballistic torsos get sheared off in the first second of contact. Have fun storming the castle for 13 minutes of having only two ER small lasers in the left arm, assuming that you're running an LFE or standard engine and everyone moves on to bigger and better things after picking your wings off.

Remember the Atlas before it got OMG armor or structure buffs? They were a joke. Now a post-megabuff Atlas is a threat, if you run into an AS7 one on one or even two on one because they have staying power. Defensive quirks are the only thing making Annihilators even minimally viable. That's the mech that even a STD-60 Urbanmech can get behind and stay behind, and backstab to death if the ANH pilot is unlucky enough to get left in the dust by a NASCARing team. Quirked like an Atlas, they are a major threat if even tangentially supported to keep pests at bay.

You want to get rid of quirks? You're going to have to change the game fundamentally. All Clan mechs will need to be (1) deleted from the game or (2) cross-tech will have to be implemented fully so the IS can field Clan mechs in faction warfare, and then just forget seeing anything but Wave 1 omnis, IIC assaults and heavies, and Mad Cat Mark IIs on the field in any mode, ever. We already pretty much have that but for the diehards, and that's with IS v. Clan balance in reality being nearly the best it ever has been thanks to the quirk regime, skill tree, and Civil War tech, all of which were net buffs for the IS. In pre-quirk days, back in the beta regime, tech was all level 1, essentially. So everyone was on the same page and the Catapult and Victor were meta. Victors are back only because of quirks and Civil War tech including the light engine. Catapults still haven't recovered from the 2016 nerfs they got after their badly needed resize, the only one you see regularly is the K2 because of the ballistic mounts, you only see the dual-rotary build anymore, and they still pop like eggshells if you can get a firing solution on one and let him have it in the torsos before the rotaries strip you.

Edited by Chados, 23 September 2017 - 03:38 AM.

[LordNothing]

i think the biggest issue is that the quirk system is good, but completely misused. they have been used to give mechs flavor, to make the stock loadouts viable (lol), but never used as a way to control op builds that have been discovered by meta mashing tryhards and used to great effect in mwowc. these builds stood out and rather than applying direct nerfage always solved the problem in the most disruptive way possible.

it needs to be confined to buffing bad mechs and nerfing good ones through nega-quirks. pgi refuses to use negaquirks on anything but the timby because player backlash will go nuclear. i think those players are wrong and that negaquirks are actually a badge of honor as opposed to a detriment. but its totally ok to nerf an entire weapons system that effects every mech in the game that can mount it, even the bad ones, because a stupid hardpoint config on a single mech is overperforming. it would have been fairly straight forward to give the kodiak negaquirks instead of nerfing the uac10 into oblivion and still have the mech over perform in other ways. it took what 3 or 4 nerf passes to make the mech find its balance point, most of these in the form of weapons nerfs (uac10, ppc+gauss) that hurt so many other builds that are actually too weak to be viable otherwise. so many clan mechs which can only support a single ballistic are better off without that slot occupied.

[Bud Crue]

Source Mystic, on 26 September 2017 - 10:56 AM, said:

Every time I get invested in making this game better I just rember... that PGI does not care what its player base wants.Then I realize two things. One that there entire system is based on a business model and what will makes them the most real world dollars . Second the average player does not want true balence or counters they want their pet mechs buffed and they want anything that kills them or makes there game challenging nerfed. In this environment balance will never be addressed . My problem has never out right been the quirk system it is how pgi empliments it. It is never stabilized balenced or structured in a way that causes all mechs to have a place and equally be good at a role. More over it does not reward players for playing underdog mechs that do not have quirks or are under performers. See my biggest problem with MWO is that PGI should not be constantly nerfing mechs down to what is least effective. They should be bringing all mechs up to a standerd of success. Instead they create a junkyard of useless mechs and a constant shifting Meta that favours a less diverse game and plays favorites to a hand full of mechs. Lights do too well in matches they nerf them then the do not even give a light better bonuses for things like scouting. So really this game become only what mech can you get 800 to 1000 damage a game. They say this is a team game it is based on roles but they do not reward a light for scouting or efficient hit and run tactics they do not reward for any thing but dammage and kills. so why does it not suprise me that every one chooses the highest dps or alpha builds they can get. There is more to ballence than quirks and I am just really tired of pgi and their one deimential reward meta of damage and kills are the only relivant objective.

Your navigation of the quirks issue in the above thread seems vaguely familiar.
You started off with the same premise as the original mechcon skills tree announcement: remove all quirks (see your thread title and OP). PGI obviously did the same thing (see the mechcon 2016 PowerPoint). Up until they actually dropped the skills tree Russ, Chris and Paul were speaking of "quirks having introduced a level of power creep" "quirks must be drastically reduced", and other ever so gradual recognitions that the original absolute view of "quirks removed" was not possible.

Then up above you finally conclude: "my problem has never outright been the quirk system it is how PGI implements it". Oddly enough, PGI had the same realization. Chris put it in terms of "quirks should not be a puzzle" and finally that quirks should not demand only a single optimized build in order for a variant to be played successfully (you'll have to go to reddit for this conversation); and even that there was no problem with quirks. And so having finally concluded that quirks were not the problem but rather how they were previously implemented they started to refocus on reducing most offensive quirks or generalizing them and even adding some new quirks into the game (see defensive boosts to many IS mechs since December, see set-of-8th quirks recently added to some clan mechs).

Congrats. You got to this realization in 6 pages. It took PGI the better part of a year to conclude the same thing.

[Tyroki]

The problem is, while PGI of the past were pretty stupid about how they were doing things, PGI has what? 5 people working on the game now, while the rest work on MW5? Only one guy seems to be working balance, and that includes working on any future tech they might be building up.

It's no wonder they're slow to get anything done.

[Wildstreak]

Athom83, on 22 September 2017 - 06:23 AM, said:

Because that is his primary and he is lying. Also, the forums rules forbid posting with alt accounts so if, and that is a big if, that is an alt then he could be banned/suspended/whatever.

Not sure as I have seen people post under alt accounts and nothing happens.

[Athom83]

Wildstreak, on 02 October 2017 - 06:26 AM, said:

Not sure as I have seen people post under alt accounts and nothing happens.

"Under typical circumstances running alternate accounts is not prohibited, unless doing so violates a specific provision of this Code of Conduct" -http://mwomercs.com/conduct

He is also breaking the "Greifing", "Harrasment", and "Trolling/Unconstructive" parts of the CoC which make his use of an alt account a break of the rules. Also, if it is an alt and he is using that instead of his acccount "from 4 years ago" is because it got banned... so then he's also breaking the "Circumventing Moderation" part. Yah, any way its going doesn't look so good for him.