114 replies to this topic

[Bigbacon]

i say the survival skill tree is worse off than having quirks. its exacerbates the problem. You start having mechs with incredible amounts of armor and/or structure, sometimes almost the same or more structure than armor which is pretty stupid.

quirks make sense at times but certain types of quirks probably need to go or ST should only based off the base values and not the % from quirks.

[Xmith]

Bud Crue, on 20 September 2017 - 09:46 AM, said:

No quirks, or even reduced quirks, on a whole lot of mechs means those mechs are useless.
Making content useless is not going to fix balance issues no matter how much you want it too.


If the goal is to remove quirks then they have to have a mechanism in place to account for their functionality. Such a mechanism does not exist, or at least has not yet been mentioned by PGI. Thus, the majority of quirks are not going anywhere (no matter how much they nerf).

Quirks are just another crutch to be able to deal out more damage and kills. Nobody signed up to role play. People are only intererested in hurting the opposing player as much as possible.

You got people with a lot of mechs. They want all their mechs to be able to dish out damage and kills no matter the size of the chassis. If they can't, then they will call for buffs to these mechs. It does not matter what the intended role of the mech is. If it can't kill or dish out a lot of damage, then they cry that the mech is useless.

PGI has no choice but to install quirks if they want to continue selling mechs. Because all people want to do is kill, kill, kill. That's pretty much the only thing I want to do. This is why I pilot mechs that were designed to kill, kill, kill.

[Bud Crue]

Xmith, on 20 September 2017 - 02:53 PM, said:

Quirks are just another crutch to be able to deal out more damage and kills. Nobody signed up to role play. People are only intererested in hurting the opposing player as much as possible.

You got people with a lot of mechs. They want all their mechs to be able to dish out damage and kills no matter the size of the chassis. If they can't, then they will call for buffs to these mechs. It does not matter what the intended role of the mech is. If it can't kill or dish out a lot of damage, then they cry that the mech is useless.

PGI has no choice but to install quirks if they want to continue selling mechs. Because all people want to do is kill, kill, kill. That's pretty much the only thing I want to do. This is why I pilot mechs that were designed to kill, kill, kill.

Okay.

Crutch or no crutch, quirks are necessary.

NO ONE would play an Atlas without structure/armor quirks. No one would play any of the 35 ton humanoid IS mechs. No one would play mechs with bad hit boxes, low numbers of hardpoints, low hard points, less than ideal movement characteristics, etc. without quirks. Lose quirks (without some mechanism to replace/improve their functionality) and you lose more than half the content of this game. Set that precedent an no one going forward would buy another mech pack unless every mech pack from here on out was identical and idealized and guaranteed to always be so.

Edited by Bud Crue, 20 September 2017 - 03:04 PM.

[Khobai]

Quote

There is no such thing as command or support in this game.

they dont exist yet. because those roles havent been added yet.

role warfare does not currently exist in the game. but it needs to

again I am talking about adding those role to the game by expanding the skill trees and adding new equipment.

Quote

They don't need new equipment/abilities to make them fun, they need firepower to actually be useful in combat AND have these ancillary abilities/equipment. Again, you are doing nothing to address the main issue that lights simply have the least firepower and are expected to fulfill these support roles that require even MORE tonnage to be dedicated to non-firepower related items.

that is stupid.

mechs need differentiation from other mechs.

we dont need more of the same. giving more firepower to underperforming mechs like the raven just makes them more similar to existing mechs like the jenner. we dont need the raven to be more like the jenner. we need the raven to be different from the jenner but not any less viable.

one way to add differentiation is to make doing damage not the only thing that matters. turning the raven into the electronic warfare mech its supposed to be accomplishes that.

your concept of this game is so bland. I dont want every mech to be the same. I want them to all be different and perform different roles. in order to get to that point we need to create different roles, even if they dont exist currently.

the concept of role warfare is obviously way beyond your mental faculty to comprehend so im done discussing it with you for now.

Edited by Khobai, 20 September 2017 - 03:12 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Khobai, on 20 September 2017 - 03:04 PM, said:

role warfare does not currently exist in the game. but it needs to

And I'm telling you, there is role warfare to an extent.

However, some roles just don't make sense in this environment, a command mech is whatever helps the DC do just that and requires minimal piloting involvement (like HBK-IICs or really mediums in general). An Atlas is not going to be a command mech because it is simply too big of a target, requires you to push because of all the issues with it as far as ranged play, and because of its slow speed requires significant focus on positioning just like the Whale which makes it a bad choice for someone who is trying to DC. This game is not lore, just because it was a "command" mech there DOES NOT mean that is going to apply regardless of what equipment you give it (outside of the ability to see the position of all enemies at all times or something absurd like that).

Khobai, on 20 September 2017 - 03:04 PM, said:

that is stupid.

mechs need differentiation from other mechs.

Mechs need differnetiation from other mechs sure, but putting the focus of support on a mech that already is gimped firepower wise is also stupid. TT construction rules already cripple light mechs in being as effective as larger mechs and you want them to be the focus of support roles (meaning even less firepower than the meta ones have right now)? Sorry, that doesn't make sense unless that equipment somehow bolsters their firepower to awesome levels (like auto-CT streaks XD).

Khobai, on 20 September 2017 - 03:04 PM, said:

we dont need more of the same. giving more firepower to underperforming mechs like the raven just makes them more similar to existing mechs like the jenner.

We need both to have more firepower or the Raven will simply be boring to play because it essentially will have no real combat involvement. Lights don't normally get involved until mistakes have already been made and really just serve to scout and make the snowball effect worse.

Khobai, on 20 September 2017 - 03:04 PM, said:

one way to add differentiation is to make doing damage not the only thing that matters. turning the raven into the electronic warfare mech its supposed to be accomplishes that.

Damage will still be the only thing that matters, the thing you need to be looking at is supporting that damage dealing role. Discord Orb of Zenyatta (applying a damage increase for all friendlies while you maintain LOS on your target for example while still being incredibly threatening yourself), Ada (disabling enemies for a time, healing friendlies, damaging enemies, buffing friendlies, she does it all), Widowmakers Ult (allows you to see the position of all enemies to appropriately position), etc are all great examples of support and there is something in common with them, they all have active combat roles on top of support, that's what makes them fun to play. Too often the topic of EW focuses on crap that doesn't matter and not things that do or are engaging during play.

Khobai, on 20 September 2017 - 03:04 PM, said:

your concept of this game is so bland. I dont want every mech to be the same.

I don't want the game to be bland either, but I also understand that certain things in this game simply are different than in TT and that mechanics of each role need to be engaging and fun from both the user and target perspective and some of the crap that people bring up "CUZ MAH LORE" just do not apply well in this environment without bending A LOT of rules to accommodate. In the end, BT does not adapt to an MP only FPS well. You can refuse to accept this all you want, but the roles you seem to want are either going to change the game in such a way that it is unfun (like lasers requiring target locks to have full range), or are going to have no impact to how the game is played and largely be ignored like the current IW or EW.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 20 September 2017 - 03:39 PM.

[FupDup]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 20 September 2017 - 03:36 PM, said:

Ada

*Ana

[thievingmagpi]

I don't mind quirks or the changing balance of power.

If it were up to me I'd do a complete rebalance every 6 months or so to keep things fresh.

[Vonbach]

QUIRKS JUST NEED TO GO

In other word IS mechs just need to go.

[thievingmagpi]

I miss my lb10x autoshotgun centurion. First mech I got regular matches of 1000 damage with.

Nothing better than circle strafing some fatties in a medium or seeing a light think he can skirmish you and chasing his *** down.

Edited by thievingmagpi, 20 September 2017 - 04:03 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

FupDup, on 20 September 2017 - 03:38 PM, said:

*Ana

Shhh, I haven't played it in awhile, mostly because of playing comp in this game eating all my time.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Quirks are poorly implemented and poorly utilized. Quirks should exist to give mechs more flavor, and potentially buff underperforming mechs in interesting ways. They shouldn't be the boring stat buffs they currently are, and they shouldn't be used as band-aids to fix the underlying imbalances between the Clan and IS tech bases.

"Quirks" should be stuff like the Urbie's 360 degree twist, the Night Gyr's Laser Heatsinks, the Cyclops's sensor boost (though it should be a targeting boost) and the Atlas's crit protection. Give mechs more fun and unique traits like those.

Further, mechs should be differentiated in many more ways than agility, toughness, hardpoints, or hitboxes. What about sensors? Why do mechs (with very few exceptions) have the exact same sensor ranges, sensor detection arcs, and targeting abilities? Why is a 100 ton Atlas as easy to detect at the same range as a 20 ton Locust? Why do mechs all have the same number of crit slots in each component? Why do mechs with the same engine and tonnage all have the same top speed? All of these should be different!

[adamts01]

Khobai, on 20 September 2017 - 02:23 PM, said:

not really. what we have now is a shadow of what the scouting role should be. and electronic warfare is virtually non-existent.

Yep. The only real electronic warfare we have is ECM blocking a weapon that only performs against potatoes in quick play.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 20 September 2017 - 02:29 PM, said:

Ummm, the job of a scout is to find the enemy, that's what lights are good for. I'm not sure what else you think scouts should be doing but I'm willing to bet that whatever it is, it is complete crap that again, lacks understanding of how MWO played. You can think there is some equipment that is going to "revolutionize" the way the game is played but that is pretty naive to think because there are some pretty universal basic mechanics when it comes to an FPS like this. Trissla seems better at putting words to these than I do.

That's a very shortsighted vision. ECM as a hard counter was always a mistake. I'm fine with making the ECM mech invisible to radar, but what it should do instead is give an area buff with a considerably longer range. Like the closer to a friendly ECM you are then the longer target data or locks take to get on your mech. Let Active Probe counter the enemy's ECM advantage and get rid of ECM counter, that way ECM/Active Probe isn't such a wasted combination. I still think this game needs a cone of fire to help reduce boating, limit these insane structure/armor quirks we have, and eliminate Ghost Heat. That cone could be made smaller by locking on to your target first, and Active Probe could help with that, just like ECM could protect you. In a dream world we'd have a much larger map with much more spread out persistent objectives, so fast and stealthy scouts would be a requirement, but right now that job just doesn't exist, as you know exactly where the enemy will be and exactly how the match will play out from the drop screen. Once computing allows, it would be great to have randomly generated maps, then scouting could have a path-finding role as well as tracking. So yes, as far as this game is concerned, scouting and electronic warfare are virtually non-existent.

[A Shoddy Rental Mech]

A properly designed skill tree wouldn't need quirks.

PGI could balance by varying the number of skill points given to a mech. Some mechs get more points, some get less.
Not just a blanket 91 points for every mech.

Then if PGI wanted a varaint to be unique, it could give free skill points aka free armor points or free sensor points.

Then everyone can complain that their favorite mechs not getting enough skill points, total number or free, instead of complaining about quirks.

[Athom83]

Source Mystic, on 21 September 2017 - 06:44 AM, said:

Quarks are completely unnessacery at this point ether buff the base stats or buff the skill trees for each mech where it needs stronger advantages . Problem solved

Just... how is that any different from quirks?!?! In fact, that is basically the definition of what quirks do. How aren't you seeing this?

[LT. HARDCASE]

The skill tree giving even the best mechs weapon quirks is an issue for me.

[Bud Crue]

Athom83, on 21 September 2017 - 07:04 AM, said:

Just... how is that any different from quirks?!?! In fact, that is basically the definition of what quirks do. How aren't you seeing this?

ROFL
This reminds me of the debates prior to and during the skills tree was announced where folks were asserting that the wholesale removal of quirks as originally proposed at the Mechcon presentation would be a panacea for all the balance ills in the game. I kept arguing that underperforming and inherently disadvantaged mechs would need quirks no matter what. Some folks kept asserting in response that obviously PGI would be addressing such mechs with their "inherent base line values". Yet, no one, ever, could explain how such a system would work or how it would be different from quirks.

Of course Russ seemed to shut the whole debate down when he tweeted (I'm paraphrasing) that "well of course we will still have some quirks, as chronic under performers like my Dragon will still need them". That was, until Chris and Paul had their Q&A, which made it sound like once again we were back to the whole "overall quirks are bad and we need to dramatically reduce or remove them" (again I'm paraphrasing), and that was the apparent plan until the skills tree dropped and most quirks remained and the status quo was largely maintained, and then doubled down on when last month they introduced MORE quirks into the game with the new set-of-8 quirks for the remaining clan mechs that lacked them.

Which brings us to the present, and folks like the OP who have apparent difficulty (perhaps even reasonably so) in understanding just what exactly is the plan with quirks and why is everything still the same as it always was despite the last year and all that messaging?! LOL. Damn this dev group's vision is entertaining to try follow/determine. Trying and frustrating, but entertaining.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

adamts01, on 20 September 2017 - 09:55 PM, said:

That's a very shortsighted vision. ECM as a hard counter was always a mistake. I'm fine with making the ECM mech invisible to radar, but what it should do instead is give an area buff with a considerably longer range. Like the closer to a friendly ECM you are then the longer target data or locks take to get on your mech. Let Active Probe counter the enemy's ECM advantage and get rid of ECM counter, that way ECM/Active Probe isn't such a wasted combination.

How does any of this improve gameplay? Just like the first iteration of ECM, it is a bunch of complicated nonsense that ultimately is best avoided for shooting things. It's a lot like the sensor buff on the Cyclops, something that no one honestly cares about.

adamts01, on 20 September 2017 - 09:55 PM, said:

That cone could be made smaller by locking on to your target first, and Active Probe could help with that, just like ECM could protect you.

This makes counter play very unfun, for examples of this just look to how ECM and missiles play well with each other. Not being able to hit you because you have some piece of equipment is absolutely stupid and it is partially when any mechanics that tie accuracy to sensors is going to suffer automatically because of any stealth mechanic (which should really be part of Stealth Armor ONLY given how much you sacrifice to even take it in the first place).

[adamts01]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 September 2017 - 08:17 AM, said:

How does any of this improve gameplay? Just like the first iteration of ECM, it is a bunch of complicated nonsense that ultimately is best avoided for shooting things. It's a lot like the sensor buff on the Cyclops, something that no one honestly cares about.

It's just personal preference. Some want more of a simulator and some want more e-sports. I'd love the changes, but I can absolutely see why some wouldn't.

Edit: I'll expand on that. I also hate the hard counter of ECM on LRMs and target data. I'd actually be fine if that hard counter were tied to stealth armor. But I don't think my proposal would be any more complicated than certain equipment cancelling other stuff at certain ranges, I think it would be much more simple in use. Every mech on the map would be affected by every ECM and Active Probe depending on their range from each unit. There's nothing you really have to do, less than now. No moving within some magic sweet spot, no switching equipment to counter mode, just let it do its thing. If you're finding it hard to get locks, that means there's an enemy ECM nearby. If you're getting easier locks and data, that means a friendly Active Probe is helping you out. The only reason I like ECM decoupled from stealth armor is that stealth is a huge handicap with how this game plays out, and having a red dorito over your head negates most of the point of having ECM in the first place. If things changed and you lost that dorito until you were manually targeted, I'd be fine with your suggestion. But as it is with the bad visibility on half the maps, too many shots are taken just because of the dorito, and current ECM needs to counter that.

Edited by adamts01, 21 September 2017 - 09:01 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

adamts01, on 21 September 2017 - 08:43 AM, said:

Some want more of a simulator and some want more e-sports. I'd love the changes, but I can absolutely see why some wouldn't.

Except there are two VERY different goals between a simulator and a typical video game (e-sports or not).
Simulator: Realism > Gameplay
Typical Game: Gameplay > Realism

[adamts01]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 September 2017 - 08:49 AM, said:

Except there are two VERY different goals between a simulator and a typical video game (e-sports or not).
Simulator: Realism > Gameplay
Typical Game: Gameplay > Realism

If you want to get super technical about it. But it's a game, a competitive game at that, so gameplay should always be at the forefront. And obviously there's a wide range between CoD and a simulator.