East Indy, on 19 February 2021 - 01:04 PM, said:
What do you nerf, though? There are those jump jet bonuses, and there are base agility stats — do either address what makes the 'Mech so powerful? VB's suggestion of a minimum engine rating might work if it were draconian.
On principle you're right about buffs and nerfs but in this game, superiority often comes from characteristics that aren't easily altered.
Let me put it this way: I hate overuse of the word "literally" but I have literally never dropped in a Clan 'Mech since 2012. I couldn't stand the couple years of "balancing" by assuming similar numbers of Clan tech on teams, and yet negative quirks — remember those? — on a handful of top performers were far less effective and interesting than positive quirks on dozens and dozens of average ones.
I'll say it for the millionth time: even if unintentionally, quirks are the lifeblood of the game since they increase likely purchase and play of variants tenfold.
Yeah I know. I talked about these issues, and suggested a minimum engine size as a possible fix, in the original post. I suppose we've now reached the point in a thread's trajectory where people just click on the last page without context. Lots of posts are now just repeating back to me what I've already said >_<
So yes, the big question is if some new exception to the usual balance methods should be introduced in order to handle an outlier. This is a design philosophy question. On the one hand, the answer is Obviously Yes, because the balance impact is real and you shouldn't avoid fixing problems just because those fixes are outside of the sorts of fixes you've done in the past. On the other hand, the problem is obviously caused by a complex interaction of many factors, and is the tip of the iceberg of other problems in the overall balance paradigm, and so the fix should come from addressing those issues. But that's really hard and probably isn't going to happen. So if we wait for that, we'll just keep the status quo forever.
And then we also have the issue of if we introduce a new method of nerfing certain mechs via Minimum Engine size or negative quirks, who else should get them? Is there some consistency we need to enforce, or can we just target individual chassis/variants as needed?
These were all implicit or explicit questions in my original post. Now that it's been talked about a bunch, I think i've come to my own conclusion: Yes, we should use whatever method we need to bring mechs to the proper level of power, and we don't have to be super consistent about it.
The Vapor Eagle is supposed to be a fast skirmisher and duelist. Instead it is a slow, second line damage dealer. A Minimum engine size is a quick and easy fix. We don't have to think about if it should be applied to other mechs (although if we think about it enough, we can probably think of some.) PGI can just do what is necessary.
Of course, the Vapor Eagle will still be much more powerful than all the other skirmishers and duelists. That's because most mechs in this role are kind of left behind. So that's an area where others should be buffed up to compete. Maybe a slight agility nerf to the Veagle and removal of JJ quirks to make room for others in that role space.
Edited by Heavy Money, 19 February 2021 - 01:33 PM.