I'm not saying that is impossible to do well in such a situation, but in my opinion it's a lot harder and not entirely in your own hands either. In a scenario as described in the example, the player will have a very hard time if the enemy team is geared towards long range engagements. It get's even worse if the majority of the own team is similarly fitted and in consequence has no desire to close the distance. If there is no way to close the distance while staying in cover you aren't left with a lot of options. You could stay in cover and hope that the game isn't already lost when someone does decide it's time to close in. You could also try and close the distance leeroy jenkins style, dying hilariously but at least providing something to chew through for the enemy and buying the own team some time to inflict damage.
In the end, having mechs that arent geared towards the maps requirements provides a significant disadvantage to a team. One that is further amplified by the fact that organised teams can mix and match their setups for a certain playstyle and bring enough voting power to the map selection to choose a map that fits their setup.
My suggestion is to allow players to select the variant of the mech-chassis they selected after the map selection is done. This way the player could fit different variants for different requirements and upon mech selection pick the one that is best suited.
This way the current ton-limit design/mechanic could also stay in place, since just the variant but not the chassis changes, meaning tonnage would stay the same for each player.
This would also provide a further reason to keep all the variants of a mech in the hangar once it is mastered.
As i am not familiar with the matchmaking process in factional warfare, the scope of this suggestion is limited to the quick-play matchmaking for groups and individual players.
Edited by Nagelfar, 07 February 2016 - 05:59 AM.