28 replies to this topic

[AlmightyAeng]

I continually see threads on the forums about "Lights are useless. Mediums are useless. Heavies are useless." No, no one ever accuses assaults of being useless, just slow.

Feel free to disagree with me...but are they just useless, or performing their roles? Hear me out before you flame.

Now, in canon (and yes, I know, MWO doesn't care about canon) 'Mechs cost a bunch of money. As a result, you didn't often have all assault lances. (Lyrans had money)

You got a wide range of 'Mechs because part of the advantage of smaller 'Mechs is that they were easier to acquire, fix, etc.

MWO has thrown that out with repair and rearm. I'm OK with that.

That said, it has taken away a large part of role warfare. I'm hopeful CW will bring it back when it limits your weight for drops.

I don't think lights or mediums or heavies are useless. They aren't SUPPOSED to go toe-to-toe with a heavier weight class unless they're exceptionally well piloted. I hear people saying 'Why bring a light when you can bring a medium > bring a heavy > bring an assault? They do it better?"

Well, yeah, in a straight up fight, the bigger, more heavily armored, more heavily armed 'Mech is gonna facestomp the other.

But when we are forced to take a variety fo weight classes, we won't all have assaults. The smaller 'mechs will be forced to actually work together to take out the bigger, scarier 'mechs, and they'll have objectives that they'll be better at completing. Frankly, I think that's working as intended, it just isn't part of the game yet, since at this point all we have is deathmatches with no real rewards yet.

Agree? Disagree?

[Frisk]

I can explain this.

The masses have this mentallity:
"Robot smash."

You can see it in the threads complaining about people "capping," so don't get upset. Just do what I do. Assume everyone on this bored is a sub-70 IQ and take everything with a grain of salt.

The "Robot smash" mentallity typically doesn't work with lights or medium mechs... but that doesn't stop the sub-70 crowd from crying about it on the forums.

[Eleshod]

The main roll for MOST light mechs is scouting and harassment. Most maps are two small for any sort of effective scouting and the risk/reward doesn't stack up for it. My stalker with seismic knows those jackasses are STILL behind that rock, without a raven or spider needing to tell me they are there.

Now seismic brings us too the second point, harassment.. Or the ability to force attention away from the main fight or suffer the consequences. Between the new seismic mod and the insane alpha, doing ANYTHING in a light other then hiding is a detriment to your team.

To break it down a bit, if I potshot from behind a rock, I take 3 ppc and a gauss to my RT which is now armorless and in the orange/red range, this means ANY sort of fighting WILL pop my XL engine if the fightee has half a brain and can shoot straight. If I attempt to flank and shoot in the back to force enemy attention away for a moment, the enemy knows I am coming through seismic and already has a lovely alpha set up for my legs.

Tagging suffers the same issue, the lack of people using LRM's and the exposure to stupidly high alpha's makes this role worthless as welll.

So case and point, lights ARE pointless atm taking a stalker means ill have more firepower, more survivability and all around more usefulness to my team.

Lights need a staple to make them an asset to a team and not a lightly armored detriment. They need placeable scouting items, better mods for assisting team-mates and major buffs to things like the narc... Which would be amazing for assistance if the fixed it properly.

[AlmightyAeng]

See, I have encountered SOME of that with lights. If I hop out from behind a rock and take a potshot, yeah, I get hit. However, if I STRAFE and shoot instead, moving from cover to cover, I get my shot in and am usually not hit. If I have even just ONE more light partner, or a medium, working the cover-to-cover strafe tactics...well...big 'mechs fall down hard.

I'm a big believer in "Wolfpack and go for Objectives" when it comes to lights. I think that too many lights who want to 'dance' around big 'mechs get greedy. Take your one, MAYBE two shots, and disappear. Take nibbles and go. Don't circle and think you can nibble with impunity. You can't.

[Vodrin Thales]

Ghost Badger, on 31 May 2013 - 07:20 AM, said:

I continually see threads on the forums about "Lights are useless. Mediums are useless. Heavies are useless." No, no one ever accuses assaults of being useless, just slow.

Feel free to disagree with me...but are they just useless, or performing their roles? Hear me out before you flame.

Now, in canon (and yes, I know, MWO doesn't care about canon) 'Mechs cost a bunch of money. As a result, you didn't often have all assault lances. (Lyrans had money)

You got a wide range of 'Mechs because part of the advantage of smaller 'Mechs is that they were easier to acquire, fix, etc.

MWO has thrown that out with repair and rearm. I'm OK with that.

That said, it has taken away a large part of role warfare. I'm hopeful CW will bring it back when it limits your weight for drops.

I don't think lights or mediums or heavies are useless. They aren't SUPPOSED to go toe-to-toe with a heavier weight class unless they're exceptionally well piloted. I hear people saying 'Why bring a light when you can bring a medium > bring a heavy > bring an assault? They do it better?"

Well, yeah, in a straight up fight, the bigger, more heavily armored, more heavily armed 'Mech is gonna facestomp the other.

But when we are forced to take a variety fo weight classes, we won't all have assaults. The smaller 'mechs will be forced to actually work together to take out the bigger, scarier 'mechs, and they'll have objectives that they'll be better at completing. Frankly, I think that's working as intended, it just isn't part of the game yet, since at this point all we have is deathmatches with no real rewards yet.

Agree? Disagree?

In short I completely agree. In TT if you did not have BV or tonnage caps you would bring all assaults as well. This may change a bit with the onset of CW, because cap wins will be much better rewarded than they are now, especially if drop tonnage limits are introduced. Until then light and mediums will always be second class citizens and no amount of balancing will change that.

[I am]

Just watched a painful 3v2. Last three guys on our team were Atlases, last three on the opposite team were Raven 3Ls. The 2 Ravens, killed the three Atlases, and neither died. One was almost dead though. Had assumed seeing 3 assaults vs. 2 lights, that the win was in the bag. Not this time. Whole brawl occurred on our base. The assaults came back to defend cap, and had to stay in the square or we would lose by cap. Ugly to watch.

[HUcast]

Frisk, on 31 May 2013 - 07:28 AM, said:

I can explain this.

The masses have this mentallity:
"Robot smash."

You can see it in the threads complaining about people "capping," so don't get upset. Just do what I do. Assume everyone on this bored is a sub-70 IQ and take everything with a grain of salt.

The "Robot smash" mentallity typically doesn't work with lights or medium mechs... but that doesn't stop the sub-70 crowd from crying about it on the forums.

People don't like something that I like, So I'll just assume that they are all less intelligent then I am, oh, I'll just say they are acting like children too, that will show them! I have such a superior intellect!

[MeiSooHaityu]

I do hope that with the implementation of Community Warfare, the roles of various weight classes will be better defined and used. This should help smolder a lot of these "Mediums are bad" type of complaints.

Overall though, I do tend to use Heavies the most, but I do have a few Mediums I like to use as well. Mediums are not useless, but many people who play either stomp out into the open firing wildly, or MUST have 4+ PPCs with a Gauss rifle (that won't fit into anything smaller than an Assault). People who have that kind of mentality just won't understand how to play smaller mechs.

[Vodrin Thales]

I am, on 31 May 2013 - 07:55 AM, said:

Just watched a painful 3v2. Last three guys on our team were Atlases, last three on the opposite team were Raven 3Ls. The 2 Ravens, killed the three Atlases, and neither died. One was almost dead though. Had assumed seeing 3 assaults vs. 2 lights, that the win was in the bag. Not this time. Whole brawl occurred on our base. The assaults came back to defend cap, and had to stay in the square or we would lose by cap. Ugly to watch.

Hate to say it, but those were bad Atlas pilots, or at least they had a bad drop. It only takes one accurate alpha from an Atlas to cripple a Raven while the Raven has to hit the Atlas repeatedly to kill it. If you lack the patience to set up that one shot in your Atlas that is a pilot issue. It's not really a statement of the relative strength of the Raven versus Assault mechs.

[GumbyC2C]

I have a Spider with one ER Lrg laser and one TAG. thats it. I have a positive K/D with it and I have a great W/L with it. I get tons of points by tagging for the boats and sniping. I have tons of fun harassing and distracting the other team's heavier units. I am all for more BT TT cannon so scouting/harassing is what I plan to do when I launch that thing. If I feel more like "ROBOT SMASH!" then I will happily launch something from my collection of Atlasi (whats the plural of Atlas anyway?) or Highlanders or one of my fast Awesomes (Still viable BTW). But in BT TT cannon, there is zero chance that my Spider should be able to go head to head against anything 50 tons and up and expect to win-pilot skill being roughly equal. And I am totally OK with that.

I would like to see tonnage limits on the matchmaker. I think that would be far better than ELO IMHO.

[Eleshod]

Vodrin Thales, on 31 May 2013 - 08:07 AM, said:

Hate to say it, but those were bad Atlas pilots, or at least they had a bad drop. It only takes one accurate alpha from an Atlas to cripple a Raven while the Raven has to hit the Atlas repeatedly to kill it. If you lack the patience to set up that one shot in your Atlas that is a pilot issue. It's not really a statement of the relative strength of the Raven versus Assault mechs.

The three atlas put their backs to the base, force the ravens into FULL firing arc and the game is over. They were bad, really bad infact. If they had put their backs to the base they would have full 360* coverage and the ravens would have to fight in the fire, from that point on all it takes is one shot to drop them.

[FupDup]

Ghost Badger, on 31 May 2013 - 07:20 AM, said:

I continually see threads on the forums about "...Heavies are useless."

What substance have you been smoking? I'd like some, because it sounds pretty potent.

[Frisk]

HUcast, on 31 May 2013 - 07:57 AM, said:

People don't like something that I like, So I'll just assume that they are all less intelligent then I am, oh, I'll just say they are acting like children too, that will show them! I have such a superior intellect!

Reading comprehension might help you come up with better reponses... but then again... sub-70... I'm just glad you can read.

[silentD11]

Frisk is right. People have decided the way to play the game is to mob everyone up and either go for a big *** brawl, or set up a firing line and blast away. In this situation the only thing that matters is tonnage and damage output. Which naturally means mediums and lights are nothing more than targets. It makes assaults and some heavies much better than they normally are.

On the other hand if you focus on capping lights and mediums all of a sudden have role to play and pretty good. However this offends peoples e-honor and they panic since they don't know what to do outside of smashing action figures together so they cry about it.

Don't play smash the action figures with them, cap and capture. All of a sudden their builds aren't so uber and lights and mediums have a role again. Then reap the delicious tears.

[Victor Morson]

Some things are useless.

MGs are useless. Flamers are useless. Artillery Strikes are useless. There is literally no justifiable use for these things. I'd even argue LRMs are useless.

Then there are things that are just bad.

Spiders are bad. SRMs are bad. Some variants are bad, some entire 'mechs are - looking at you Commando. These things are inferior, but you could in theory do something with them.

-

People mix the terms sometimes, sure. I might even be guilty of calling the slow *** Cataphract 4X useless, when really, it's merely bad.

Really you could word search every instance of Useless or Bad and replace them with Underpowered and you'd have less biased, more accurate reading.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Victor Morson, on 31 May 2013 - 10:02 AM, said:

Some things are useless.

MGs are useless. Flamers are useless. Artillery Strikes are useless. There is literally no justifiable use for these things. I'd even argue LRMs are useless.

Then there are things that are just bad.

Spiders are bad. SRMs are bad. Some variants are bad, some entire 'mechs are - looking at you Commando. These things are inferior, but you could in theory do something with them.

-

People mix the terms sometimes, sure. I might even be guilty of calling the slow *** Cataphract 4X useless, when really, it's merely bad.

Really you could word search every instance of Useless or Bad and replace them with Underpowered and you'd have less biased, more accurate reading.

This is it in a nutshell.

Problem is everyone uses anecdotal evidence to prove their point.

Example...above.. 3 vs. 2 Atlas and Ravens.

Doesn't mean anything because we have no concept of who is piloting, what their loadouts were, whether they were new purchases.

Lots of variables.

The end result is, EQUAL skill, 3 Atlas should kill those 2 Ravens most of the time.

[Eleshod]

Frisk, on 31 May 2013 - 09:06 AM, said:

Reading comprehension might help you come up with better reponses... but then again... sub-70... I'm just glad you can read.

Yes, that will prove our point. We can sling insults out and around! It will surely get people jumping on my side.

[Und3rSc0re]

Ghost Badger, on 31 May 2013 - 07:20 AM, said:

That said, it has taken away a large part of role warfare. I'm hopeful CW will bring it back when it limits your weight for drops.

I like how people keep thinking if a weight drop was put in that it would magically spawn medium players from the sky when the playerbase is so low. This actually would have worked if rnr was still in.

It will be 12v12 by the time cw rolls around and expect even less medium players when more than half of each team is heavys and assaults. Lights will still have a role and can play their roles very well.

Edited by Und3rSc0re, 31 May 2013 - 12:57 PM.

[Captain Katawa]

Ghost Badger, on 31 May 2013 - 07:20 AM, said:

I continually see threads on the forums about "Lights are useless. Mediums are useless. Heavies are useless." No, no one ever accuses assaults of being useless, just slow.

Useless is a word used by those who have their heads filled with META instead of grey mass.
I'm an old *** Doter and I pretty much know that meta is full of *********. People who believe in meta mostly pick meta pick something considered Overpowered by meta and show us some pretty poor performance.

An awerage meta believer looks like a highlander with Goose+3ER PPC with armlock going into close combat with 3x zoom and missing alphas.
"Why the hell did my OP build not work?"
"It must be my team full of useless mediums"

There's certain use and purpose for every platform, some chasis do the same work a bit better than others but I don't see anything useless.
It more depends on you and what are you good at.

[Vodrin Thales]

Tonnage limits for PUG drops may be problematic to implement, but for full pre-made drops it should be easy. If we have a 12v12 queue then that should include tonnage limits.

For the PUG queue it may need to be done by giving C-bill/ XP bonuses for using lighter mechs or some similar process. Although light mechs may be incentivized in CW (depending on the rewards for having a faction that is winning) by cap wins being more rewarding.