11 replies to this topic

[Cato Zilks]

The Atlas is back. It has a major torso twist buff and it can brawl like a boss again. I think this is a great, much needed change in the game. The buffs to the other agility stats for the Atlas are quite tame by comparison. It serves as a good case study for making agility stats less cookie cutter.

I have brought this up before, but the basic idea is to have mechs pilot a bit differently from each other. I am not just talking about degrees of nimbleness or sluggishness like we have now, but mechs having one or two agility stats be really strong. Take the Nova: its original artwork had no waist, so the mech could not torso twist. I certainly don't think we should take away any mechs ability to torso twist, but I think it could be really interesting to give the Nova (and/or other mechs) a super buffed turning ability while having a weaker torso twist speed. Make it so some mechs twist primarily by turning their legs, while others (like the Atlas) can torso twist like a boss, but can't turn a corner to save their life. Other mechs could get super buffed accell/decell but not have super twisting and turning abilities.

(edited for emphasis)

Edited by Cato Zilks, 20 August 2018 - 05:07 PM.

[kapusta11]

Except all the good variants have structure quirks instead of armor.

[Metachanic]

kapusta11, on 20 August 2018 - 06:14 AM, said:

Except all the good variants have structure quirks instead of armor.

If you haven't played an MRM60 + AC20 / UAC20 / LB20X Atlas D, you may wish to. Hard to argue it isn't one of the good variants after new tech. That said, the structure-quirked variants may need quirk adjustments if these agility changes go live (which I hope they do). Either more agility, more potent offensive quirks, or a bit of armor.

[B L O O D W I T C H]

While the (brawling) atlas benefits from being more nimble, some mechs, especially Cyclops (which already have been fairly responsive) feel like medium mechs now. I don't think mechs like Sleipnir deserved a buff in mobility.

[Daurock]

Toha Heavy Industries, on 20 August 2018 - 06:34 AM, said:

While the (brawling) atlas benefits from being more nimble, some mechs, especially Cyclops (which already have been fairly responsive) feel like medium mechs now. I don't think mechs like Sleipnir deserved a buff in mobility.

Agreed. If anything, I kind of believe that the sleepy was already on the edges of too fast for a 90 ton assualt. Anything capable of comfortably handling twin HGR is should be pretty slow, imo. It and the mauler should probably be the same speed, and that appropriate speed is probably somewhere between the Live server cyclops, and the Live server Mauler.

[Cato Zilks]

Soo... any thoughts about making agility stats less cookie cutter?

[Xetelian]

Cato Zilks, on 20 August 2018 - 01:26 PM, said:

Soo... any thoughts about making agility stats less cookie cutter?

Twisting is extremely important, making it so everything can twist damage is a good thing from my perspective.


The only people who will suffer for this are the people who want to stare at you and fire two medium lasers because they have a bracket build and their long range weapons aren't doing anything.

[Cato Zilks]

Yes, I agree. Twisting is good. But I never asked anybody in this thread if they thought twisting was good, if the Atlas needs armor quirks, or if the Cyclops was too nimble. I asked what yall think about having mechs be good in specifically one or two aspects of agility instead of being good or bad at all aspects.

[Daurock]

Cato Zilks, on 20 August 2018 - 05:05 PM, said:

Yes, I agree. Twisting is good. But I never asked anybody in this thread if they thought twisting was good, if the Atlas needs armor quirks, or if the Cyclops was too nimble. I asked what yall think about having mechs be good in specifically one or two aspects of agility instead of being good or bad at all aspects.

Honestly, it kind of depends on what you're trying to do for a mech, and what role you want it to take. I think the general gist of the PTS changes were to make the mobility of generically underperforming chassis better, something that tweaking one or two attributes isn't going to do a huge job of doing.

That's not to say it couldn't in theory be used in more interesting ways - Take the dire wolf, for example- Its a mech that isn't suited well to brawling, even if it DID have good twisting - The nose is easy to hit from the side, the lack of shield arms, and the overall boxy, huge relatively unarmored profile don't fit the things you need to do a good brawler. We could instead give it good Acceleration and Deceleration, possibly even hill climbing speeds, to better make it a long ranged trader. In theory, you could do similar things between something like the MAD 2C and the MadCat2 Making the Marauder a better brawler, due to better profile, better twist, and better turn rate, but the MadCat gets better Acceleration, and better range quirks for better poking. You could also separate some of the big IS Assaults, making some of them have great torso twist, but fewer Armor quirks (Cyclops) while adding non-agility quirks to mechs that are similar, but slower (Like armor instead of agility on the mauler.) The bottom line is that yes, you could differentiate mechs more by separating out their various agility advantages.

Now, is that something worth persuing? Possibly, but it does add another dial to the mix, that has to be tuned accordingly. Tuning dozens of mechs in the fashion would take a lot of time and effort, and i'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze in all honesty.

Edited by Daurock, 21 August 2018 - 12:30 PM.

[B L O O D W I T C H]

Cato Zilks, on 20 August 2018 - 05:05 PM, said:

Yes, I agree. Twisting is good. But I never asked anybody in this thread if they thought twisting was good, if the Atlas needs armor quirks, or if the Cyclops was too nimble. I asked what yall think about having mechs be good in specifically one or two aspects of agility instead of being good or bad at all aspects.

The better the agility the better the mech is at virtually all aspects.
If you put it that way, sure if one variant can have more structure or armor quirks or better heat efficiency, why can't another be more nimble (be it torso twist speed/yaw or acc/deacc).
We kind of already have that in the form of MASC, tho. Like the imfamous 115 kph zeus.

Edited by Toha Heavy Industries, 21 August 2018 - 12:36 PM.

[Cato Zilks]

Daurock, on 21 August 2018 - 07:17 AM, said:

Honestly, it kind of depends on what you're trying to do for a mech, and what role you want it to take. I think the general gist of the PTS changes were to make the mobility of generically underperforming chassis better, something that tweaking one or two attributes isn't going to do a huge job of doing.

That's not to say it couldn't in theory be used in more interesting ways - Take the dire wolf, for example- Its a mech that isn't suited well to brawling, even if it DID have good twisting - The nose is easy to hit from the side, the lack of shield arms, and the overall boxy, huge relatively unarmored profile don't fit the things you need to do a good brawler. We could instead give it good Acceleration and Deceleration, possibly even hill climbing speeds, to better make it a long ranged trader. In theory, you could do similar things between something like the MAD 2C and the MadCat2 Making the Marauder a better brawler, due to better profile, better twist, and better turn rate, but the MadCat gets better Acceleration, and better range quirks for better poking. You could also separate some of the big IS Assaults, making some of them have great torso twist, but fewer Armor quirks (Cyclops) while adding non-agility quirks to mechs that are similar, but slower (Like armor instead of agility on the mauler.) The bottom line is that yes, you could differentiate mechs more by separating out their various agility advantages.

Now, is that something worth persuing? Possibly, but it does add another dial to the mix, that has to be tuned accordingly. Tuning dozens of mechs in the fashion would take a lot of time and effort, and i'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze in all honesty.

Yeah, so I think that is a good example with the Dire Whale. The idea is to give mechs agility stats that help them in important ways while also letting PGI nerf some mechs when they need to. For me, the Night Gyr is a shinning example of this, its agility was smashed into the ground because it was such a nasty hill humper/poptart. But the net effect of the agility nerf was to cripple the mechs ability to brawl while only mildly effect its long range trading that made it so powerful in the first place. Telling PGI to only target some stats (Accell, Decell, and pitch for the night gyr, but not torso twisting or turning) can help prevent agility nerfs from over-correcting.
In regards to time investment, yes and no. In terms of time commitment this is just telling Chris we would be cool with mechs feeling different in this way. It is his job to work on balancing the game, he is always doing that. This just tells him we are ok with this type of change. These changes would get rolled into a PTS, and thus yes they would eat up PGI time... but not in a way that is taking time away from other things. It is just an avenue of approach for the balance team.

[50 50]

@Cato Zilks
I agree with your suggestion, I feel that is a good point to make about having the mechs feel a little different to pilot and this is not a bad angle to use to provide differences between variants of a particular chassis.
For example, those mechs that are considered better due to the higher torso mounts as opposed to those with the weapons in their arms.