Orion Pirate, on 06 June 2012 - 12:48 PM, said:
I thought that is why this game requires tactics to play? I know this is a reason why I WANT to play a light mech...
Why are you mostly negative about this game? Most of your posts are so down? You seem to know alot about MWO, a game you have never played...
I've said almost nothing about this game. My speculation is based entirely on my experience with past Mech games, particularly MWLL. LRMs in MWLL go through sinewave swings in balance, and the times when LRMs were the most powerful were when the game was at its most unplayable. In early 0.2, Clearcut was an LRM campfest, because people would literally just line up on a hillside, wait for a reticule to turn red, and push a button. That was it. It was the most stale, one-dimensional zero-skill thing ever seen in a video game, and it brought the gameplay to a standstill. Brawling is arguably one of the most fun and skill-intensive things in the game, because it's frantic, dangerous, and brings you face-to-face with your enemy. However, brawling could never happen if you took a hundred missiles to the face before you could close the distance.
The notion that long-range combat is more difficult than close-range combat is something that's been true in almost every game since forever. This is even true in Battletech. At long-range, this was presented in severe penalties to-hit. In Mechwarrior this never seems to be the case. Sniping with gauss and PPCs is almost trivial. In other games, sniping people requires dealing with scope shake, bullet drop, long lead times, and usually has a requirement like a headshot to do the most damage. It's how they limit the effectiveness of extreme-range fighting so it's not totally frustrating, by forcing the application of a modicum of skill. ER lasers are almost a joke at long range, you can laser off anything you want. LRMs barely require you to aim, you just push button, receive bacon.
Long range combat shouldn't be any easier than close-range combat, and so far in every Mechwarrior game that's been true. Nobody likes disproportionate applications of skill, where certain weapons are 'EZ-mode', where undertaking specific playstyles forces you to simply be much better than your opponent to exploit them. Nobody also likes the feeling of helplessness that comes from things like easy-to-use extreme-ranged weaponry that outranges all of their own. Obviously this will have to be true to some extent in Mechwarrior, but like I said earlier: hitting things at long range in tabletop would end up with to-hit percentages in the 30% +- 10% range. You might be able to hit them, but good luck doing it consistently before they can move up.
Speaking purely from the point of view of what's best for players' enjoyment, what's best for game pacing, and what's best for skill ceilings, long-ranged combat in Mechwarrior traditionally betrays all of these, and LRMs are the worst due to just how ridiculously easy they are to use.
I have no objection with LRMs being effective
as a matter of principle, but I do have an objection to the impact such weapons could, should, would, and often do have on gameplay. LRM camping is the absolute lowest application of skill you can get in this game, and as such it shouldn't be rewarded. Again, this is something you see in most games. Snipers usually struggle to make points, while the guys who are out there actually
doing thing are capturing objectives and being useful.
Do you want to play a game where everyone hides behind rocks, not moving, waiting for someone
else to be the first one out to get shot? Trench warfare is boring and leads to long, homogenous, uneventful games, but trench warfare is what happens in Mechwarrior when you make long-ranged weapons too powerful, easier to use, and more rewarding.
Edited by Frostiken, 06 June 2012 - 08:41 PM.
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