First of all, I like the idea of quirks. They add additional variety and benefits to the gear you get if you go that forging route, it’s just that currently it can make or break that gear too - the problem I feel is that in theory they should all have a reasonable trade-off, but in reality a lot of them are pretty much either strictly good or strictly bad. In my opinion, some even have a much more detrimental effect than certain defects.
Particles
For the love of Oort, disable the particles that appear when switching items, or give us an option to do so! To me, it is honestly one of the most annoying issues that I’ve encountered with the game - it closely follows even fall damage and player hitboxes blocking shots and revives. Not only does it strongly obfuscate the vision for a solid few seconds (which is of course just great during intense combat), but it also causes noticeable frame drops on my set-up when it’s a few buffs at once - and with high level forging it almost always is. I can only imagine how bad it must get for PS4 players, most of the ones I know avoid quirks as much as possible.
It’s possible to make the effects less intrusive via modding. I’ve recently started using a mod for this (minus the meteor visibility), thanks to daddyskitten. But considering PS4 players I think the particles for (at least) Quirk buffs should just be removed entirely. Same goes for the distortion effect, although it can thankfully be disabled on PC. I had to because it was just too annoying, which is a shame because now I really miss the effect on portals.
Even with the mod, I still get noticeable frame drops, since it only makes particles invisible but doesn’t remove them.
It also seems like at certain points in the game, periodically, when day switches to night and vice versa, or when taking damage, the buffs refresh themselves. That seems really unnecessary, but I’m sure there is a good reason for that, it seems like some kind of workaround. Would be great to see that solved in a better way, though.
Icons
A pretty simple fix, update the icons for the buffs to use the corresponding forge icons. A bunch of them still use the placeholder pint icon which really doesn’t help. I was looking into it while writing this post and noticed that it’s simply due to some icon paths being outdated, so I made a mod to fix it!
To apply it, open "Boundless\assets\archetypes\statusicons.json", search for "Quirk Slippery Feet" to find the list of quirks (all beginning with "Quirk") and replace their entries with https://pastebin.com/nM1J9McT
Edit: alternatively see this post for an easier way to apply this mod and other mods.
Bleeding Edge / Nutritionally Challenged
The downside of these quirks is that they slowly drain your health/energy while granting a 30% bonus to the maximum. In theory that sounds pretty fair, but in practice the positive effect is nullified because upon switching to an item with either of the quirks, your current health/energy remains unchanged. To heal or eat to make use of the upside you would have to switch items again, which then of course just resets the process. Arranging your hotbar and limiting your switching to make it work is possible, but not worth the downsides and the hassle.
I think it’s worth to consider taking the current percentage health/energy into account when the maximum changes through the buffs (just like was recently done for skill page switching). I understand it might be slightly exploitable because you could for example “switch” to the lower health, heal and then switch back for essentially more value from the heal, but it doesn’t seem like a huge issue to me. If that is a concern, maybe alternative upsides that wouldn’t have these issues are worth considering. For example bonus armor for Bleeding Edge and an item energy drain reduction for Nutritionally Challenged.
Nutritionally Challenged seems much worse because of the rate at which it drains energy. Even if you use Well Fed, you’re essentially sacrificing your only food buff slot to make the item usable, and of course due to switching, the maximum boost is still irrelevant most of the time. This might also be emphasized due to higher vitality builds being more common than higher zeal builds, at least for hunting.
For Bleeding Edge, all you need to be is Full Up and you’ll be fine, so even despite the upside not functioning properly I think this quirk is not too bad. However, please disable the first person “taking damage” animation if Bleeding Edge is the source, it is misleading and irritating. In case the % health change is fixed, I wouldn’t mind a slight damage buff to let’s say 15 per tick to balance it out.
Wonky Trigger
On weapons, it is slightly annoying, and I also think that it happens too frequently considering the durability trade-off. Especially considering it can block you from using your off-hand at just the worst times. Otherwise it’s not too bad.
On bombs, it’s actually great, triples the durability and on healing bombs is arguably very amusing (unlike One Jump Ahead).
But grapples, oh boy… I’m not sure why I let it happen, but I do own a pair of grapples with Wonky Trigger. When forging I must have thought “just have to play around it, always aim where I might want to grapple”. That’s when I learned that it applies to detaching as well, so after bumping my head, knee and various other body parts to death a few times, they’re now sitting on a shelf and I’m not sure I’ll ever use them again. I think it’s worth to consider making an exception for grapples and not applying Wonky Trigger to detaching.
Edit: also see this update post below.
One Jump Ahead
Similar to Wonky Trigger, I think this quirk is fine for the most part, it just happens way too frequently as well. The double jump also doesn’t feel like it has a lot of force to be relevant if you also have the Jump Distance Epic (which also makes this worse, thanks to fall damage). The double jump can be pretty helpful for saving yourself some damage if you don’t forget about it.
Edit: also see this update post below.
On Icy Ground
Probably my favorite quirk, 40 fall armor with basically no downside? Sweet. Maybe a little too sweet. I am worried, because the supposed sliding doesn’t feel like it works as intended and a fix could make this quirk immediately gross. If it is fixed, the sliding should still be significantly less severe than on actual ice blocks, in my opinion.
Carpe Diem / Carpe Noctem
It makes me scratch my head that with all the quirks that add a buff to the player which helps showing what the effect is doing, these two don’t do that. Especially since buffs seem to refresh when day transitions into night and vice versa, it would be really helpful to know at first glance whether the upside or downside is active.
Another issue with these is that the tool tip on the item never seems to update properly. It caused me a lot of confusion when working on the damage calculator, I even spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what causes the tool tip to refresh to show the correct value - waiting for the next day/night switch? Nope. Moving the item around in the inventory? Nope. Returning to sanctum/switching areas? Nope. Restarting the game? Not even that. I still don’t know. Just seems to happen randomly.
On tools I think they are generally bad, since most of the time you want to consistently one-shot blocks rather than having to offset the quirk with two levels of the damage boon or some other workaround.
Best of Health / Fully-Filled / In Poor Health / Ravenous
In my experience, you don’t ever want to stay at low health because it increases risk of dying. You also don’t ever want to stay at low hunger because it limits your item usage severely.
This makes Best of Health and Fully-Filled pretty much objectively good and the other two objectively bad. Perhaps it’s worth considering off-setting the threshold to be around 60% or even 70% or even higher. Just need to keep in mind that with the way Bleeding Edge and Nutritionally Challenged is currently applied, it might synergize with those. Which could be interesting, though.
Random Noises
The least impactful quirk of them all, which is probably a good thing? When I first learned about it, I was actually expecting it to be a lot less subtle, I was half expecting random silly sounds reminiscent of the Hanna-Barbera library. Plus, the noises aren’t really random at all, it’s always the same one and always plays when used. It’s barely noticeable and I don’t think I would mind if it was a bit more silly, playing random game sounds for example.
Aggravated Attacks / That Sinking Feeling / Slow-Mo
Really have no issue with these three, they are situational and most of the time not intrusive and can be really helpful and thus perfectly fits what I would like to see in a quirk. The other quirks could learn a thing or two from these!
Bouncy Feet
It’s broken and kills you! But since devs have already confirmed that it will be fixed, there is not much to add here. I imagine the trampoline effect should be fine once it’s usable, assuming you don’t lose too much control.
TL;DR:
Sorry, this really is a post and a half.
- General: PLEASE remove particles or give us an option to, also update the debuff icons
- Bleeding Edge: disable damage animation, % based current health update on switching
- Nutritionally Challenged: drain energy less quickly, % based current energy update on switching
- Wonky Trigger: less frequent and make it not apply to releasing on grapples
- One Jump Ahead: less frequent
- On Icy Ground: if it ever gets fixed, please don’t nerf it too much?
- Carpe Diem / Carpe Noctem: fix tool tips not updating, make current effect more obvious
- Best of Health / Fully-Filled / In Poor Health / Ravenous: move the threshold up?
- Random Noises: isn’t really random at all
- Aggravated Attacks / That Sinking Feeling / Slow-Mo: more quirks like this, please!
- Bouncy Feet: lol
