213 replies to this topic

[Prezimonto]

I know this thread is about the medium mech class, but upon reading the title my first thought was "which one?".

[armyof1]

Well I've been working up the Basic skills on my A/AL Cents and really it's mostly a practice in frustration. Just switched back to my PPC build and immediately do twice as well, and I'm not even boating, it's just a dual PPC Dragon. It's not because I have high Elo or anything in the medium class either, I've barely played meds after they put in Elo so I should be dropping right into the middle of it all. And it's not because I'm new to playing meds either, I've had hundreds of matches in my 4SP. It's just that in the way the game works currently being a medium is clearly harder.

It just feels like I have to rely on my team to do well a lot more as a medium, in my DRG-1C I can start looking for targets and soften them up at long range, in my Cent I have to wait for my team to keep the opposition busy so I can flank and do damage without being focus of fire. As soon as I get sniped it's usually multiple ERPPCs and damages my mech heaviIy. I kinda regret buying my Cents now, it's a good thing I already had the engines and weapons so I didn't spend that much CBills.

[Saltychipmunk]

It isn't the medium mech that is broken , it is the concept of the brawler mech that is broken.

Due to how heat works along with limited weapon hard points. all builds essentially do the same damage with slight deviations.

your brawler assault mech does at most around 60 damage alphas , your average sniper is around 30 - 60 damage alphas.

the same is true for every mech class.

the average light does 20 , the average mdium 30 -40 the average heavy 40 -50 all can be matched or almost matched by sniper variants.

i run a cicada which is arguably the weakest medium mech ( a ****** jenner as people like to call it) I have won games doing 900+ damage.

I run 2 ppcs

I am scared to death of even one light mech getting near me , yet i continue to dominate matches with damage in the 500 -700s on average .. with just two ppcs.


The fact that most snipers are just as effective up close as they are in range is a huge problem , but it is not the only one.
The other main issue is that medium ranged and short ranged weapons are ****.

hear me out, imagine your a mech going 100 - 150 kph, ask your self which is a better choice , a heavy weapon that does all its damage upfront or a bunch of low powered weapons that do damage over time.

ppcs may be 7 times heavier than a medium laser, but with a ppc i don't have to keep my center torso exposed and facing the enemy while my lasers deal their dot.

medium lasers are impossible to keep on target in high speed fights , srms are impossible to aim with if not ins massive numbers due to spread. no one in their right mind would want to be with in 100 meters of a snipers that can alpha one shot a mech , so small lasers and machine guns are out too. and pulse lasers are too heat and weight inefficient for the worthless 25% faster dot.

Thus we are left with the ssrms which by no coincidence is the only good medium ranged weapon.


gentlemen right now it is not pure damage that is winning games , it is reliable damage.

and that is what all the so called op weapons do : reliable constant dependable damage.

Edited by Saltychipmunk, 13 May 2013 - 10:50 AM.

[James Montana]

I'm of the school of thought that each hard point needs to be classified as being able to accommodate either a large, med, or small variation of the weapon system structurally supported in any portion of any mech in question. I think it will a solve a lot of issues.

Edited by James Montana, 13 May 2013 - 01:40 PM.

[PropagandaWar]

Inflatable Fish, on 11 May 2013 - 02:49 PM, said:

Just wanted to share my thoughts on something I've observed in game lately.

See, I only ever run medium mechs. Two hunchbros and a centurion, to be precise. And it's extremely, and I mean extremely rare that I see more than one other medium mech in a match, if at all. These days, everyone and their pet chinchilla seems to be running either assault mechs, poptarting/AC-toting heavies, or lightweights, necessarily with ecm for more annoyance.

Medium mechs are supposed to be the brawling sidekicks to the heaviest bodies out there, right? Medium-to-short range, decent mobility and survivability, enough firepower to pull their own weight. The problem is, the current environment actually penalises medium mech pilots. Let's see what you're faced with when you jump behind the wheel of your trusty hunchbro:

1. The abundance of sniper builds and their nigh-absurd effectiveness at *any* range (point-blank er ppc/gauss rifle salvo? no problem!) means that not only do you have to plod your way through muddy hell to get into fighting range where you actually start to matter, you're still in the same danger, if not greater, of catching 40+ damage alphas to the face repeatedly when you get there, despite your supposed superior mobility. And since the snipers are almost exclusively heavies and assaults, you're outarmoured and outgunned anyway!

2. Ballistic builds (especially my pet peeve, the dual AC/20 jagermech) who can core you in one salvo and kill in the next (and fully armoured centurion torso be damned, they don't care) p. much render you obsolete at ranges you should theoretically be the master of. Again, your mobility is of limited value here as most of the time, even with an XL300 engine, you can't outrun their turning speed, and all they need to tear you down is a few seconds.

3. Since everyone else is happily camping ridges and circlejerking with long-range weaponry, you can p. much forget about any support when you close in with the enemy. Noone but another medium mech will ever have your back, they're too busy scanning the opposite ridges waiting for a clear shot.

Now just to be clear, I don't consider myself a bad player. I can use cover fairly well to hide from snipers, I pick my battles as much as I can, and I can dish out considerable damage despite the above hindrances. I've pulled off matches with over 800 damage done with both hunchbros and the centurion.

But all the time, I keep getting the feeling that the niche my favourite weight class was supposedly designed for got erased somewhere along the way. Noone wants to play medium mechs anymore, because most of the time they just don't fit in.

Well, thanks for listening to this little rant of mine. I'm fairly sure I'm not the first one to mention it, but I needed to vent.

You like running meds. Me too. In fact come by our TS over at www.teamcored.com on Tuesday nights (And several others) thats pretty much all The Crows run. We start at 7pst to whenever. Minimum speed is 80 though and you have to have fun. Put prop next to your name when you show up and I'll grab you.

[Trauglodyte]

Mediums work just fine and don't suffer from anything mechanically wrong.

Mediums do suffer because players are selfish stat/number whoring idiots that want to run around and smash faces. In order to be successful, you've got to either be lightning fast and pack a punch (those players are dwindling thanks, in part, to PPC heat changes and ballistic state rewind) or be heavy enough to pack a major punch while taking the punishment from being too slow. Mediums are either too slow and can't take the punishment or aren't fast enough like Lights and can't scare people with their loadouts. So, what happens is you try out the Medium class <insert chassis here>, look around several games not seeing any Mediums, cruise the board a little bit to see what the community is saying/crying about today, and notice that all of the fun centers around Heavies and Assaults. Players then shrug, ask themselves why they should keep going down the road of least fun, and change to something heavier.

Its really sad how maleable the community really is. Its why you never see Dragons, non-3L Ravens, non-ECM Mandos, etc. People play them and then get told they're stupid for wasting their time. So, they shift over to what everyone else is doing. It also doesn't help that the game is now focused so heavily on alpha striking and that the bigger mechs allow for bigger alphas. We're back to playing Quake with everyone running around using only the Rocket Launcher. Again, BORING!!!

[Inflatable Fish]

PropagandaWar, on 13 May 2013 - 01:43 PM, said:

You like running meds. Me too. In fact come by our TS over at www.teamcored.com on Tuesday nights (And several others) thats pretty much all The Crows run. We start at 7pst to whenever. Minimum speed is 80 though and you have to have fun. Put prop next to your name when you show up and I'll grab you.

7 pst is 1AM round my parts, so it's kind of no go. But I appreciate the thought.

[Gaan Cathal]

Livewyr, on 12 May 2013 - 04:00 AM, said:

It's not PGI or the mediums..

It's the player base. Start weening people off TDM and get them to start thinking about offense, defense, and a maneuver game.. then your medium will be important again.

Cap like a **** until they start thinking of mediums as important for defense and counter-maneuvers.

Trauglodyte, on 13 May 2013 - 01:46 PM, said:

Its really sad how maleable the community really is. Its why you never see Dragons, non-3L Ravens, non-ECM Mandos, etc. People play them and then get told they're stupid for wasting their time. So, they shift over to what everyone else is doing. It also doesn't help that the game is now focused so heavily on alpha striking and that the bigger mechs allow for bigger alphas. We're back to playing Quake with everyone running around using only the Rocket Launcher. Again, BORING!!!

So what you're saying is that The Game Is Fine, despite only rewarding a narrow band of builds with the ability to repeatedly win games. What the problem is, is those damnable players wanting to win - and worse, fitting out their mechs in the fashion that the current game is designed to encourage, should a player want to win.

The 8v8 arena shooter is fine as long as people don't want to win, is what you're saying.

And under no circumstances should the game be changed to make more builds viable for players who want to win. That would ruin the spirit of the game, and it's players that should change, and accept not wanting to win is the correct way to play a team-based arena shooter.

Edited by Gaan Cathal, 13 May 2013 - 01:54 PM.

[Inflatable Fish]

Trauglodyte, on 13 May 2013 - 01:46 PM, said:

Mediums work just fine and don't suffer from anything mechanically wrong.
[snip!]

Mediums are either too slow and can't take the punishment or aren't fast enough like Lights and can't scare people with their loadouts.

You, sir, are confusing me.

[PropagandaWar]

Inflatable Fish, on 13 May 2013 - 01:52 PM, said:

7 pst is 1AM round my parts, so it's kind of no go. But I appreciate the thought.

No worries. Come around on the weekend. Well do Crow style all day long. One thing we noticed since the last patches (This has been verbably said to us) is the other team has had a lot more fun because it waters down the poppers and the snipers. If you can round up a few guys in your time zone try it. Makes the gameplay a bit more fun. If I am on with a certain Cored group I do switch between my Meds and heavies.

[Tahribator]

Inflatable Fish, on 13 May 2013 - 01:55 PM, said:

You, sir, are confusing me.

He's just trolling, move on.

[Nik Reaper]

stjobe, on 13 May 2013 - 05:50 AM, said:

I know this isn't a particularly popular view, but to my mind a light should have an even chance of taking down an assault in an undisturbed one-on-one, all other things being equal. It should be a contest between the assault pilot's ability to leverage his advantage in armour and firepower against the light pilot's ability to leverage his speed and agility. If this was the case, the assault would need lights and/or mediums to protect it from being outmaneuvered by the opposition's lights/mediums. However, this isn't the case. Assaults and heavies are self-sufficient; they're as effective versus other assaults and heavies as they are against medium and lights - leaving the medium and lights without much of a purpose when the game doesn't need scouting, doesn't reward anything but damage, kills, and assists; all things that heavies and assaults excel at but medium/lights have a much harder time doing. And while increasing rewards for spotting and capping would be a great and welcome step forward, it isn't enough to break the self-sufficiency of the heavies and assault 'mechs. For that we need something else, like a re-implemented heat system.

The original balance was intended with a point of matching teams with equal BT , not tonnage or number of mechs , for one atlas you could take 3 ravens and then some , and honestly 3 ravens eat 1 atlas easily.

This is to say that BT was never about symmetric teams, with a small to non wight difference, but about similar battle effectiveness ( different number of mechs on 2 sides but similar overall payload ), so now that we have pilot skills and a symmetric team some options , like the mid. mech start to seem redundant.

As was stated a larger engine would help mids in random battles but the only thing that would make them desirable and equal to other mechs is a weight limit on drops.

[Gaan Cathal]

Nik Reaper, on 13 May 2013 - 06:16 PM, said:

As was stated a larger engine would help mids in random battles but the only thing that would make them desirable and equal to other mechs is a weight limit on drops.

Not the only thing. If it was harder for heavies and particularly assaults to take out lights, they'd regain their role as an anti-light mech. The real problem they have at the moment is that everything else can swat lights just as well, and mediums far too well.

[LowSubmarino]

For all those that say weight restriction in matches is a solution I have to reply: No.

It is a way of balancing the fights but it will not in and off itself make mediums, in their current struggle to compete with ppc/gauss/ac builds, more attractive, simply because in that respect they'r inferior to heavies or assaults.

They don't have an advantage over them. With all the skills on elite heavies and assaults can 'turn' very fast. They would have to be about 30 % slower with an equally slower turning and thus aiming speed to give mediums a speed advantage, which would be the only way for mediums to avoid 4 ppcs in their pretty faces.

And yes, the raven 3l, as I mentioned, has a significant advantage over all the other lights. I also wrote that I think that is weird and is not a very satisfying situation even though I myself run the 3l. I want to win because I am good not because spiders or commandos - and jenners to a lesser extent - are so weak. But if the raven is nerfed then in all likelyhood I will reduce my recommendations for new players concerning light mechs from one good representative in that weightclass - the raven 3l - to 0. If the 3l is nerfed to jenner, commando, spider standard then there would be no reason for me to play lights.

And since mediums already suck I would only play heavies or assaults.

Concerning weigth restrictions to avoid heavy/assault only matches...that would only work as long as anybody even plays mediums. But players want a good chassis. They - like me - will roam the forum and youtube to read and see what mechs and loadouts are effective. If I read something like :

"mediums are inferior to heavies and assaults with no advantage over them in any area but I won't have to worry as matches have weight limitations..."

Then guess what. I will still choose a heavy or assault as I dont much care about how the games are balances as long as they are balanced. Instead my main priority is and will still be to have a cool, strong, competitive, competitive, competitive, sexy mech.

That, dear ppl on this forum, is not a solution. I don't understand how you can not see that.

There are 2 things I would do.

1. and foremost: mechs that almost everheated and then shoot a weapons combination that will again add 30 - 100% of the already existing heat have an exponentially rising chance of exploding depending by how large a margin they overheated. That way ppc builds will still be effective but they cannot be spammed or the mech explodes and require awesome aim and heat managment to be good sniping weapons and not all out win weapons in any given situation. If the dice gods let a heavy or assault that shot 8 ppcs, and in so doing overstepped the maximum heat threshold by over 50 %, survive such massive overheating, then the shutdown time should rise exponentioally too, as there always have to be at least severe if not deadly consequences after massively overheating.

If they can't move for 15 seconds a medium can do a lot of damage even without the ability to mount 4 or 6 ppcs. All of that won't be easy to balance. I know that. But what alternative is there? I played mediums for about a month and they just suck the way things are. If you disagree then we have a disagreement hehe. But after so many games ina medium mech and many many more matches playing against medium mechs, I can only say with absolute (subjective) certainty that they are simply not competitive in mechwarrior online. To this conclusion I come from observing the matches and results and especially observing my intuition while playing. That subconscious feeling that tells you right away how good your chances are in a given situation. Everybdoy has that feeling which is pretty accurate as it is based on your actual ingame experiences after a given time.

That intuition also dictated what mechs I recommended to my friends when they asked me what I thought they should get. As they are my friends and I want the best mechs to run by my side I never - not once - recommended any medium mech. So either my observation and intuition are completly off. Or something is completley wrong with medium mechs.

Ppl want to be competitive. Ppl like to be good. Mediums are not competitive and thus don't qualify as good mechs so I do not recommend them.

2. light mechs should be brought to the raven 3l standard not the other way around. Which doesnt mean they should have the very same abilities and hardpoints. Let some be stronger in some areas and weaker in others but let them be competitive. And if you say the raven 3l is too strong then I disagree. It is possible to kill a good heavy or assault pilot in a 1vs1 but have you guys actually tried that? It requires a lot of skill and time. To take out a good stalker is hard f****** work. You make just 2 major mistakes in a 2 - 4 min. fight and let them hit you with big weapons and you are dead. They can make 30 mistakes and only - if skill fails or is not competitive - 6 lucky shots with their main armament. 2 - 4 lucky shots leg the raven and it's dead too.

It is absolutley not easy to take them out and is even a lot harder in a spider, commando or jenner.

Those are my observations and (as a start) ideas to balance mechwarrior online.

Edited by oneda, 14 May 2013 - 05:04 AM.

[Prezimonto]

If they instigate tonnage limits the could add a queue time for each of your mechs based on tonnage limits... the current average time to find a match for someone with your ELO and tonnage. If the match maker could only reliably fit 200 tons/lance or 400tons/8man or 600 tons/12man... along with ELO... the match maker is going to be force to queue you for a lot longer if you want to pilot an assault in pub games.

This will have the effect of pushing more players, especially the hardcore players who want to fit 6 or more matches an hour down in tonnage. The casual player might decide to wait a little longer for the game they want or grab a smaller mech right now for a quick game.

[Truesight]

Well i have to say, it is interresting how the matchmaking works.

Yesterday we did someting unthinkable.. a 4 man Medium Mech drop. The matchmaker always gave us some Meds and 2-3 Heavys in the group too. The other group always consisted of 2 Assaults and 1-2 Heavys, rest was med and light.

The really interresting thing was, that the other Team had more weight overall every time, but not that much more (i think this is the margin they gave to the matchmaking to find matches faster).

Those games hardly had any Poptarting or PPC boating since only 2 Assaults were in game at all. It really was fun to play, we even won some games with our medium lance, i can only recommend something like that.

If you pug, in a Medium Mech at the moment, you are not having fun for sure.

A tonnage limit will not help, they will just fill it up with Assaults/lights, there is always an "optimal" number of Hvy/Assault/light Mechs to fit in the tonnage limit, you would have to lock certain classes in a game (at least 1-2 of every Class in a game) to have mediums competitive. However, this would lead to really long Queues for Hvys/Assaults.

just my 2 cents (actually i have all 4 Cents^^^)

Edited by Truesight, 14 May 2013 - 06:30 AM.

[General Taskeen]

Nik Reaper, on 13 May 2013 - 06:16 PM, said:

The original balance was intended with a point of matching teams with equal BT , not tonnage or number of mechs , for one atlas you could take 3 ravens and then some , and honestly 3 ravens eat 1 atlas easily.

Recently started playing again, only to see more of the same borefest, but that's what I expected. There was an Atlas on my team that got circled by 3 ECM Ravens, ECM'd, Streaked, and Laser'ed to death. Good stuff that (I used to do that for the lulz in my Raven). I can only handle so many Lulz though, when I see that the game is severely out of balance and encourages abusing poorly thought out mechanics by the developers.

[Trauglodyte]

Gaan Cathal, on 13 May 2013 - 01:52 PM, said:

So what you're saying is that The Game Is Fine, despite only rewarding a narrow band of builds with the ability to repeatedly win games. What the problem is, is those damnable players wanting to win - and worse, fitting out their mechs in the fashion that the current game is designed to encourage, should a player want to win.

The 8v8 arena shooter is fine as long as people don't want to win, is what you're saying.

And under no circumstances should the game be changed to make more builds viable for players who want to win. That would ruin the spirit of the game, and it's players that should change, and accept not wanting to win is the correct way to play a team-based arena shooter.

Inflatable Fish, on 13 May 2013 - 01:55 PM, said:

You, sir, are confusing me.

Alright, let me rephrase so you all get it: If you're running a slow Medium (ie, Blackjack/Hunchback), your job is to stick with the Heavies and Assaults and supplement their damage output. If you're running a fast Medium (ie, Treb/Cent), your job is to stick with the flanking forces (essentially the Dragon and the afore mentioned Mediums) and supplement their damage. If you're running a really fast Medium (ie, Cicada), your job is the scout and to stick with the Lights supplementing their damage.

The job of the Medium has always been and will always be to fill the gap and to act as a force multiplier. The Medium wasn't designed to be a front line apex mech. That is the job of the heavier Heavies and the slow Assaults. And the Medium, by nature of the slower speed, wasn't designed to be a scout force. Mediums add extra fire power on a small frame with meneuverability. The Medium is the Sherman tank of Battletech and will never be the Pershing (front line assault tank) or the Stuart (light forward scout). To put it in terms of today's heavy battlefront, you're not the M1 Abrahm and you're not the flimsy and bastardized Bradley - you're a Striker. Not as fast as the Bradley or with the design intent but faster than the Abrahm but without the punch.

The problem is that people don't want to be supplements. They want to go out and wreck faces. Furthermore, they keep clustering to the fotm weapons and try to jam as much punch into the small frame only to get destroyed by the targets that they shouldn't be going toe to toe with in the first place. To be successful with a Medium, you need someone to take the focus away from you so that you can do your job. You have to watch the flow of combat and adjust to it. Mediums can and will 1v1 an Atlas given the time, space, and liberty and that is a win of hte highest caliber due to the weight difference. But that isn't the design intent of the lighter frame. As I said, people are trying to run Mediums as what they're not only to be disappointed. Then they look at the score boards and read the community boards and see what everyone is shifting to so they join the chorus of "boo hoo, Meds are bad".

[armyof1]

Frankly I don't see in what situation mediums have a role that they're best at currently, and I think it's mainly due to two factors.

1) Some mediums are just too damn slow due to engine limitations and due to that also lack agility like torso twist speed.
2) Most mediums are just designed to be too damned big and thus too easy targets

When you're so slow most Heavies is close to you in speed, whatever you can do is just about achievable with a Heavy, but with more weapons and armor. And even if you're 30-40 KPH faster than a Heavy, being too big still makes you too good a target. These things were masked due to lag, but now with HSR coming for all weapons these faulty designs and bad engine caps is becoming apparent. Shrink the mediums to reasonable size and up the engine limits.

[Trauglodyte]

armyof1, on 14 May 2013 - 10:03 AM, said:

Frankly I don't see in what situation mediums have a role that they're best at currently, and I think it's mainly due to two factors.

1) Some mediums are just too damn slow due to engine limitations and due to that also lack agility like torso twist speed.
2) Most mediums are just designed to be too damned big and thus too easy targets

When you're so slow most Heavies is close to you in speed, whatever you can do is just about achievable with a Heavy, but with more weapons and armor. And even if you're 30-40 KPH faster than a Heavy, being too big still makes you too good a target. These things were masked due to lag, but now with HSR coming for all weapons these faulty designs and bad engine caps is becoming apparent. Shrink the mediums to reasonable size and up the engine limits.

I agree with you on that, whole heartedly. I've never liked the fact that turn radius, torso twist, etc is all tied into the engine as opposed to being a specific tweak of the chassis. I know that there is a calculation based on engine and chassis tonnage that is intended to limit the meneuverability of the heavier mechs. The poor Hunchy is supposed to be a slow heavy weapons platform designed to operate in the cramped urban environment and that is the one place where you don't want to be plodding so why, due to its smaller engine, is it saddled by being so slow in the other movement areas? Unhook and redesign this and we're on a better road.

The size thing annoys me to NO end. Granted, some are leaner but jeez why is the Treb as tall as an Atlas?

On the other hand, I do think that a lot of people feel like there should be more self sustainability in the Medium class, and I'll agree with that to a point, but are taking their complaints to too much of an extreme when you consider that the Medium is designed in a tween space. That is my only real issue with people wanting more from the weight class. You can't turn a Prius into a 10s car or a monster truck no matter how much you want it to be so. The mental image does tickle me, though.

Edited by Trauglodyte, 14 May 2013 - 10:25 AM.