A big issue is that LRMs are too damn easy to use.
I'm
not talking about their effectiveness, which has fluctuated massively from the old head-blasting top-attack missiles, to the middle-damage version, to the Jager patch LRMpocalypse version.
What I mean is that regardless of their actual damage, they've always been too easy to
use. You just hold the reticle anywhere near the target box, wait for it to turn red, and fire. Then you hold it anywhere near the target and hole that a brave teammate maintains line of sight to the target until impact.
With such easy LRMs, it only followed that they needed to put in a hard counter mechanic that completely nullifies the LRMs.
If LRMs (for example) required the player to hold the reticle
directly on the enemy 'Mech until a lock is attained, and moving the reticle off-target causes loss of a lock, then it would become possible to actually accidentally fire unlocked. Then
after the missile flight is already in the air, the strictness can be loosened to where it is now (reticle just needs to be near the target).
I don't like to bandy about the elitist term, but basically it would need "skill" to use. A better way to say it is that there's a risk of causing a failed attack.. a
miss.. just like with any other weapon.
Right now, self-TAGging an ECM-protected enemy in order to LRM them is actually more like the level of skill that LRMs should need all the time.
If LRM locks weren't so easy to achieve, then maybe ECM can stop affecting LRMs.
At least, I think this is PGI's logic, and instead of tackling LRM mechanics, they decided to totally hard-counter it with ECM, which actually makes the entire game design and balancing less satisfying for everyone.
Edited by Cyke, 02 May 2013 - 05:14 AM.