228 replies to this topic

[Billygoat]

aniviron, on 18 April 2013 - 02:55 PM, said:

Translation: Lights aren't meant to do damage.

Okay then, what is the function of a light in the game?

Don't you dare tell me it is "scouting." Scouting is not a valid role. You need a scout very briefly at the beginning of the game to determine where the main enemy push is. After that, you know more or less where they are, and can monitor their positions from afar with an assault. And honestly, the maps are not large or complex enough (even alp and tourm) that you need scouting even for an eight-assault team. Didn't find the enemy the way you went? Then they went to the other side of the map as you.

Pretty much this. There really is no scouting in this game.

On the smaller maps you can get a visual on the enemy within the first 45 seconds. The larger maps (Tourmaline, Apline, maybe Caustic) where there is an opportunity for a scout to be useful, they aren't. The maps and general way the game plays mean that the fight happens at the same place. Every. Time. Fight at the caldera. Fight at that ridge line in Alpine. Near the broken dropship in Tourmaline. It really invalidates scouting as a thing.

"I'll get kappa then come back for fight at Theta." is a line I see in team chat very frequently in Tourmaline. It completely encapsulates the specialist role of the light/fast mech right now.

[Toppins]

Not feeling very neutered in my Jenner F. I always used it as a flanker, and it still works just fine. I still topped damage/kills regularly and I still got annihilated when I picked a target with support. The light mech does have a role, and flanking/harrassing is quite viable and changes the way heavies/assaults design their builds (or risk being helpless). 150kph with a solid alpha strike can cause a huge disruption in a battle line and force the enemy to break formation or risk being burned down quickly from behind.

But yes, it felt really good riding around in my AWS-9M blowing legs off Ravens that tried to bob and weave like they still had their lag shield on.

[redlance]

good, now maybe all the heavy weights will stop crying about how my 3 lasers and streaks are OP.

[Milt]

you can still take on an assault and win in a light. With proper use of terrain, speed, and well timed/spaced shots its still doable and far more satisfying now. just remember one mistake and you are dead, as it should be.

[Cranky Poed]

i like the fact that lights are more fragile, more of a challenge.

[aniviron]

Milt, on 18 April 2013 - 06:27 PM, said:

you can still take on an assault and win in a light. With proper use of terrain, speed, and well timed/spaced shots its still doable and far more satisfying now. just remember one mistake and you are dead, as it should be.

Sure, nobody is saying it's impossible. But imagine that the pilot in the other mech is also you, your clone, someone exactly as amazing as you are. You will lose that fight almost every time, because aim is more important than position. No matter how carefully you maneuver, if that ac40 Jag hits your leg once, you have lost the battle. You don't even have to make an error for that to happen- what are you going to do, never expose your mech?

Also curious why you think one mistake should mean you die. Why should I be able to make mistakes in my atlas, but not my raven? It's not like I get some kind of huge advantage to compensate for the penalty of dying after one mistake.

[Marcus Cvellus]

Caleb Lee, on 18 April 2013 - 02:17 PM, said:

I can help answer that... it's LESS easy to take down those Heavy/Assault mechs than it was before. In fact, it's dangerous if they are covering each other and either pilot can hit the broadside of a barn.

The days where average pilots could rely on lag shields and poor hitboxes (Raven) are gone.

The light pilots you'll still see around are those with quick reflexes, a good head on their shoulder and typically NOT stupid. A stupid light is a dead light now, and unfortunately that rules out about 50% or more of the current population from what I've seen.

So they'll migrate to high armor, damage alpha builds because that's ALL they are capable of playing.

My favorite quote from last night was a bunch of assault pilots crying about how lights days were ending and they needed to be nerfed even FURTHER. I asked him what he meant when HSR was already in the game, he brought up collision and I said:

"Buddy, this is Alpine for one... second, we weren't anywhere close to your slow *** where you could have knocked us down."

Wish I could post screenshot as it made my night with several kills and over 600 damage in my Founder Jenner-D, but that'd be name & shame so...

P.S. I die more often now but I still tear up the other team.

Quit crying about how the class isn't viable anymore cause it is, it just takes a better breed of pilot to do well in it now as it's less forgiving.

"better breed of pilots" argument topples on itself. If something needs 2x more skill for less gain, it will not get fielded. Specially by new players. Players will always seek easy way out, like we can see by alpha build infestation.

So, it is either balance found, or most of mechs will just sit collecting dust and people getting bored of repetition. Depending on level of imbalance they will even decide on leaving over the fact that they will not accept that they have to pilot something with either above average skill for diminished returns or moving to more efficient class to get fun.

[Specterr]

I have not noticed too much difference in my effectiveness, definitely a lot less lights around but I don't see that as a bad thing. Personally I think doubling the hitboxes of the Raven's legs combined with the state-rewind might be a bit much, but its not unmanageable.

[TB Freelancer]

stjobe, on 17 April 2013 - 01:12 AM, said:

Last match I played yesterday in my SDR-5D (ERLL+2ML) netted me 3 kills and 4 assists.

But you're on the right track for the solution: Play better.

Will be interesting to see how this affects the 3L population.

It will be a lot tougher on bad pilots, that's for sure. Personally I got a 5 kill round in a Raven 4X. Everyone jumping up and down focusing on stuff 900m away makes it kind of easy to sneak up, backstab and fade away. A few full alphas to the back and most of them are done.

[Mokou]

RedSkotina, on 17 April 2013 - 03:10 PM, said:

cap warrior online is boring game

Did i say, i just only cap? I wait assaults for first step, or with other lights seeking some silly alone mech (assault, heavy whatever).

[Asmudius Heng]

A more nuanced sensor system that really rewards scouting would be a good start to making light mechs more viable. However scouts are only good when the team pays atention to them so most games good scouts are not as beneficial as they could be due to terrible team mates.

Also - like tonnage limits please so if you take a smaller mech you allow someone else to take a bigger mech so the tonnage should be roughly even on both sides because tonnage does matter.

[stjobe]

Asmudius Heng, on 18 April 2013 - 10:58 PM, said:

A more nuanced sensor system that really rewards scouting would be a good start to making light mechs more viable.

Once upon a way back when, there were plans to make scouting viable.
Scouts were imagined as being the only ones that could have
* increased sensor range
* decreased target decay
* extra zoom (7x)
* target info gathering/crit info
* indirect fire focusing
* multi-targeting (up to 4 enemies simultaneously)

Sadly, this seems to have been discarded, and there really is no reason to scout - not only is the role unnecessary, doing scout-like things like capping, TAGging/NARCing, finding and relaying target info etc does not pay even half as well as just loading up as many weapons as you can and try to do as much damage as possible.

It's a sad state of affairs for those of us still crazy enough to pilot lights.

Edited by stjobe, 19 April 2013 - 12:39 AM.

[Tuku]

Came expecting a thread bitching about how lights are to underpowered....was pleasantly surprised....upvote for OP

[meteorol]

Once the hitdetection really works good (right now it doesn't, atleast for me), and we have local servers, things will get ALOT harder for lights than they are now.

Just go on a counterstrike (or any first person shooter) server and watch some decent players. Contrary to what many people seem to think, a large part of the playerbase CAN aim. Everyone is running zickzack and stutterstepping, but still alot of bullets find their targets within seconds.

There are so many derogatory "go back to COD" comments all over this forum, but lets be honest:
Someone who played COD on a decent level probably has better aim than some "veterans" who only played mechwarrior for years.

The arm mounted weapons are giving huge confessions to players coming from those "twitch based" shooters, because it takes away quite a bit of the "mechpiloting" part of the aim. They have learned hit to small targets within 0.2 secs via dragshot. They won't magically lose this trait because they are sitting in a mech.

I believe once we have local servers and (finally) working hitdetection someone who has good aim will have no problem hitting a 140kph light with arm mounted weapons, even if it is running zickzack and whatnot.

I fear that light pilots have REALLY hard times ahead (and i hope this won't lead to assault&heavy only matches).

Edited by meteorol, 19 April 2013 - 01:10 AM.

[Hammerhai]

I am an inferior pilot.
So given this thread I took my Jenner for a spin. We won the game, with me chasing an opposing raven most of the time. But the match score was a paltry 18.

As long as doing damage is king for getting xp (more nb than cbills) and money, I wonder about what to do as a light. When I read about people doing 500 with several kills - well. I can't. Spotting bonuses are scarce in PUG's so.

So in the end I guess I was one of those weekend light pilots then.
I love Fast Jenny, good memories, but we will see whether Lights are still enjoyable for me in the long run.

[Rhinzual]

aniviron, on 17 April 2013 - 03:35 PM, said:

113 at the largest (245) engine rating, 126 with speed tweak. And yes, speed tweak helps, but I almost feel like it shouldn't be mandatory to have speed tweak if you don't want to just insta-die when you engage in combat. That's not fun to grind, and not everyone has the money/slots to own three ravens anyway. I can't think of any other mechs where having elite unlocked is necessary for you to be able to run it.

The Atlas and Stalker Assault Mechs really only start to shine when mastered. The Stalker STK-3F really benefits from all the extra torso twisting, speed, and cool run/extra heat before shutdown. Atlas benefits from essentially everything on the mech tree. Hell, the AS7-D-DC is the only mech that's not a Hero Mech or non-Commando Light Mech Variant that can use up to 4 modules when fully mastered. While the GXP needed for 4 modules fitting to your preferred playstyle takes a very long time, those modules along with the doubled perks from basic and all the ones from Elite will make the AS7-D-DC in question much better than a stock. Give a pilot two versions of the AS7-D-DC, one stock but with Endo/DHS and no mech skills and another using the same load out but with it fully mastered and using modules and the difference will be very clear.

Piloting a Light is a lot like piloting an Assault, especially a Brawler. Lights can't expose themselves to too many enemies and same for an Atlas, but for differing reasons. Granted, have a light or two with some mediums back up an Atlas and the other team will struggle in most cases.

Edited by Rhinzual, 19 April 2013 - 09:02 AM.

[Vapor Trail]

I say this as a primarily heavy and Assault pilot...

Maybe it's time to ease the engine restrictions on lights and mediums some?

[TruePoindexter]

Vapor Trail, on 19 April 2013 - 09:41 AM, said:

I say this as a primarily heavy and Assault pilot...

Maybe it's time to ease the engine restrictions on lights and mediums some?

The game speed limit is more of a factor there.

As for the general state of lights they're very much still viable. You just have to actually have some sense now which I guess is the hard part for some people. I ran my 3L for the first time in awhile last night and had a great time educating people on why comprising an entire team of big slow mechs is a very bad idea.

// All your base and what not

[Marcus Cvellus]

stjobe, on 19 April 2013 - 12:19 AM, said:

Once upon a way back when, there were plans to make scouting viable.
Scouts were imagined as being the only ones that could have
* increased sensor range
* decreased target decay
* extra zoom (7x)
* target info gathering/crit info
* indirect fire focusing
* multi-targeting (up to 4 enemies simultaneously)

Sadly, this seems to have been discarded, and there really is no reason to scout - not only is the role unnecessary, doing scout-like things like capping, TAGging/NARCing, finding and relaying target info etc does not pay even half as well as just loading up as many weapons as you can and try to do as much damage as possible.

It's a sad state of affairs for those of us still crazy enough to pilot lights.

Once upon a time...
But all that is scrapped and now lights have just damage score as way of contributing to the team.

[Comguard]

Funny to see that the answer to every problem MW:O related is the same: play better.

Lights are more difficult to play? > play better

Weapon values got changed? > play better

Jumpsniping, you hate it? > play better

Really, I wonder in what spheres some Armchair-mechwarriors play. Obviously they can't even comprehend some of the problems normal people are facing and are unable to give adequate advice.

It's like having a kid that's bad at math and, when it comes for help, the only thing you tell him is "be better at maths". Would be fun parenting, but not really helpful.