21 replies to this topic

[Nesutizale]

Just a quick question, I think I have only seen positiv quirks on mechs but what would happen if there would be negative quirks to counter some stuff?

I mean could it work to create more spezialised mechs or would people just discard them even if they would have a very good positive quirk on the other side.

Could it be used to bring in some more variation to mechbuilds or mech variants?

[D V Devnull]

I suppose you forgot the era of Negative Quirks and how people reacted to it? Those actually detracted from MWO's overall experience, and were ultimately stripped from the game a few years ago. They should NEVER return, and anyone suggesting this idea will find me absolutely against them.

~D. V. "Negative Quirks have already been tried, and they failed miserably... they're not to be used again." Devnull

[LordNothing]

i bet they just shifted the zero point.

[Horseman]

LordNothing, on 05 June 2022 - 04:27 AM, said:

i bet they just shifted the zero point.

Negative mobility quirks (which were the most of it) were rolled into base chassis statline, yes.
The others (if there were any outside head armor on the DWF?) were removed completely.

[panzer1b]

Theres no point for them these days. The ONLY reason for neg quirks was back when to balance the strongest clam mechs that more or less dominated the entire game when carrying certain laser vomity loadouts.

Post agility desynced from engine rating, there is no need and mechs like the timber have fallen from the top (agility buffs have made the timber decent now, but its not what it once was and frankly should not be as it was OP).

That and i know alot of people disliked the neg quirks out of principle, so i doubt that its even on the table regardless of merits. That and its just as easy to nerf OP broken mechs (if there even are any right now) by adjusting agility stats which is the whole reason the timber languished for so long in the garage until the gulag patch that brought its agility back up to useable standards and finally made it worth running alongside the HBR which was (at least with laser vomit) better in every way back then.

[Seelenlos]

panzer1b, on 05 June 2022 - 05:10 AM, said:

Theres no point for them these days. The ONLY reason for neg quirks was back when to balance the strongest clam mechs that more or less dominated the entire game when carrying certain laser vomity loadouts. Post agility desynced from engine rating, there is no need and mechs like the timber have fallen from the top (agility buffs have made the timber decent now, but its not what it once was and frankly should not be as it was OP). That and i know alot of people disliked the neg quirks out of principle, so i doubt that its even on the table regardless of merits. That and its just as easy to nerf OP broken mechs (if there even are any right now) by adjusting agility stats which is the whole reason the timber languished for so long in the garage until the gulag patch that brought its agility back up to useable standards and finally made it worth running alongside the HBR which was (at least with laser vomit) better in every way back then.

Maybe we should say "Mutually Exclusive"!

[Meep Meep]

I'm unsure of any mechs that would need negative quirks? Near all of them could still use a buff or two since there are so many pointless variants. The only way I could see a negative quirk being used is to make a handicap for a gigabuff quirk on the same mech. As in give a mech a giga cooldown quirk but balance it with a heat penalty quirk so you can only burst fire it or melt.

[TheCaptainJZ]

I could see negative quirks being possible on weapon boats that are not practical to balance any other way because the base stats of the weapon are otherwise balanced, e.g. the 12 MG Piranha. A negative quirk could be to decrease the crit multiplier since it can boat so many MGs, thus keeping the damage, but not 12x the bonus crit damage part. MGs overall have to have a crit multiplier to be useful, but there's a big difference between 3-4 MGs and 10-12 and the PIR is just an outlier.
From an objective balance perspective, there should be nothing wrong with negative quirks if it's the best way to balance an outlier that can't be reasonably balanced any other way. Generally, you would have your baselines set and balance around those. Players, though, hate nerfs and would rather devs buff everything before nerfing anything even if the end result is really the same. A lot of it seems to be based on the perception of negatives. Some mech variants have negative quirks in the form of lower engine caps but you don't see complaints about those probably because it's not printed in red. At any rate, they can be used sparingly as a last resort.

[Meep Meep]

They recently balanced mg by lowering crit chances on the mg and hmg so the three classes are more focused. Hmg are now primarily damage dealers with a low crit chance even boated with mg striking a more even balance leaving lmg as the super crit seekers with plinking damage even when boated.

[Weeny Machine]

Meep Meep, on 06 June 2022 - 01:16 PM, said:

They recently balanced mg by lowering crit chances on the mg and hmg so the three classes are more focused. Hmg are now primarily damage dealers with a low crit chance even boated with mg striking a more even balance leaving lmg as the super crit seekers with plinking damage even when boated.

Yup, I played my 12mg PIR lately (I rarely do these days) and I crept up on a newbie and unloaded 12mgs into the CT and the dude didn't turn or even react and shot and shot and shot at targets to this front...it took like 10 seconds to chew through the CT back until he blew up. I mean, that is not balanced either. When do you have the luxury of such an uptime on any mech within 120m?

Edited by Weeny Machine, 07 June 2022 - 05:10 AM.

[Curccu]

Assuming you build your piranha like this, you do at least 16 dmg each second... that newbie was backloading armor pretty nicely because he had over 160 back armor&structure for you to kill him in 10 second. More realistic number is 4-6 seconds if we are talking about atlas for example.

[Curccu]

TheCaptainJZ, on 06 June 2022 - 11:12 AM, said:

From an objective balance perspective, there should be nothing wrong with negative quirks if it's the best way to balance an outlier that can't be reasonably balanced any other way.

Or PGI just shouldn't release mechs that they see so good that they need negative quirks to be balanced.
Personally I don't see any that kind of mech in this game, PIR has its issues already, Nothing OP in that mech.

[Seelenlos]

Curccu, on 07 June 2022 - 05:53 AM, said:

Assuming you build your piranha like this, you do at least 16 dmg each second... that newbie was backloading armor pretty nicely because he had over 160 back armor&structure for you to kill him in 10 second. More realistic number is 4-6 seconds if we are talking about atlas for example.

I do not exactly get the point (what I get is that there is REALLY something wrong) but can you describe that a little deeper?
You mean he has with 1 Back-Armor 180 Armor vs an Atlas ?!?
Is this an exploit or Engine Failure or PGI-Desing-Failiure-by-Intention ???

ru

[Meep Meep]

Seelenlos, on 07 June 2022 - 07:39 AM, said:

I do not exactly get the point (what I get is that there is REALLY something wrong) but can you describe that a little deeper?
You mean he has with 1 Back-Armor 180 Armor vs an Atlas ?!?
Is this an exploit or Engine Failure or PGI-Desing-Failiure-by-Intention ???

ru

What he is saying is that the noob probably had a high back armor setting and with the reduced crit chances he actually had to chew through ALL the structure to kill the mech instead of a quick engine death crit as is usual once you remove the back armor. It was a solid nerf to all mg/hmg pir for sure. Now if you want to crit seek with boated mg you will have to mount lmg along with some energy to remove the armor so the lmg can crit it out.

[Sjorpha]

When they put negative quirks before a lot of people really disliked it, I think there is a psychological aspect where it feels bad to see that your mech has negative quirks on it even if it's objectively still good. It's probably better to "hide" that kind of balancing in the sense of just giving the mech lower base stats.

On that note I always wanted each skill tree node to have both a positive and a negative effect so that skilling up would be about specialisation rather than making your mech strictly better, I think that would have led to a much more interesting skill tree.

[ThreeStooges]

Only negative quirk people need is for the urb to use that std 70 or 60 but then you still need to shove seven hs onto the thing. Very few people are going to use stock urb that even a 48kph assault can run laps around.

[D V Devnull]

ThreeStooges, on 07 June 2022 - 04:32 PM, said:

Only negative quirk people need is for the urb to use that std 70 or 60 but then you still need to shove seven hs onto the thing.

I thought it was 8 HS with the STD60 installed???

~D. V. "double-checking that Stock UrbanMech Heat Sink count" Devnull



[edit by post's author on 2022-06-10 @ 09:45 UTC due to a formatting fudge-up]

Edited by D V Devnull, 10 June 2022 - 01:45 AM.

[Horseman]

D V Devnull, on 10 June 2022 - 01:43 AM, said:

I thought it was 8 HS with the STD60 installed???

~D. V. "double-checking that Stock UrbanMech Heat Sink count" Devnull

And you're correct on that.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Sjorpha, on 07 June 2022 - 12:34 PM, said:

When they put negative quirks before a lot of people really disliked it, I think there is a psychological aspect where it feels bad to see that your mech has negative quirks on it even if it's objectively still good. It's probably better to "hide" that kind of balancing in the sense of just giving the mech lower base stats.

That's exactly it. But they also hate nerfing base stats like what happened with the engine desync. PGI intended to weaken assault mech's agility to nerf them compared to other weight classes and large portions of the player base never forgave them for it. Maybe the balancing was done improperly but assaults have always been the most powerful mechs and I applaud PGI for trying to make it so other weight classes are competitive.

[Gas Guzzler]

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