Bud Crue, on 19 October 2018 - 07:33 AM, said:
In terms of existing better performers perhaps improving diversity is indeed a fools erand.
But in terms of all the crapier mechs that we have I am OK with pigeon-holing them if that means seeing more of them in game. Mechs like the non-1E or PB Locusts, any of the varieties of Vipers (I haven’t seen one of those in game in like a year), several of the Highlanders, etc. just need something (be it a GH quirk or what have you) to get them played. At all. If giving a currently nonplayed mech a quirk, pigeon-holes it into only one or two idealized builds, so be it; at least the thing is not in constant moth balls. They would just need to be careful to make sure that the variant in question, that is given the bonus, doesn’t make other mechs capable of the same build clearly inferior (In your example above the Rifleman with a GH quirk would still differentiate from the 5K, in that the 5K has JJs, for example).
I also accept that the quirks will necessarily only compliment what is already pretty mediocre (as in the case of the 8Q, if for no other reason than to avoid Chris’s historical view that quirks which impose a single optimized build must be avoided, but I think this can be worked with if we focus on the underperformers; since after all Chris is allowing the 8Q quirk to remain.
I wouldn't take it to mean that if we are so inclined, we couldn't MAKE places for more of these unique builds, either. Right now, not a ton of places work very well for thee things, but we could make more of them if we wanted.
For example, Let's go back to that quickdraw Example for a moment.
Assume that PGI somehow manages to put some chassis buffs for some of the of the rifleman chassis, (Or, if absolutely necessary, generic quickdraw armor nerfs) so that it actually has better effective armor (Though still lower agility) than the Quickdraw. Couple that with moving the traits on the energy rifleman to more generic (instead of PPC specific, which is stupid on that Variant, IMO) energy quirks, so that most of the variants can handle multiple viable builds, and that most rifleman chassis can indeed compete with the best Quickdraw variants. This gives us room to work with the Less good Quickdraw Variants.
Looking at the QKD variants, I notice that the 4-G has far fewer options than other QKD variants, due to hardpoint limitations. At that point, that particular variant would be on-par at best with the Rifleman in overall effectiveness, and have other variants easily available for most anything you can do with that 1 variant. That would make it a good candidate for something unique at that point, and Thus, a good candidate for something like your mentioned +1ERLL build.
So, if we add the quirk at that point, it would have lower armor than the rifleman, along with Poor-er Hardpoint locations, but have superior agility, and the mentioned +1ERLL quirk. The rifleman would compete with the better armor, better hardpoint locations, and better cooling. At least in theory, this would then be balanced with the other mech, and also, since we are effecting 1 variant of a very similar sub-set of a group, not a huge deal to pigeon hole on the QKD.
Edited by Daurock, 19 October 2018 - 10:13 AM.