Gowan, on 05 June 2013 - 08:26 AM, said:
I didn't see anything about contributing factors to pop-tart hysteria. I know that my outfit, with 34 players, has almost dropped out of the game completely because there were no effective counters to poptarts aside from other high-alpha builds or wolfpack drops, both of which feel kind of cheap and gimmicky. I personally went from playing three or more nights a week to only playing on patch days, with the odd weekend match if I was feeling particularly masochistic. A few of our most dedicated guys just uninstalled last week with no intention of coming back because, in their words, "The game just isn't fun anymore." When I asked them about it, their two complaints were: 1) Poptart builds being impossible to counter without joining the gimmick arms race, and 2) high-alpha builds, which would admittedly be a lot easier to handle if missile boats could find cover without being popped by a JJ sniper.
Now, probably something needs to be done about PPC heat. It was too high before the change, but now it is clearly too low. Maybe hiking it back up to where it was and giving it an added fire effect (fuzzy hud or something, maybe?) would make it less boatable but still worth using? I don't know.
And while shake should be reduced if it is causing people to feel sick, fire accuracy while jumping should come with some kind of a handicap -- a wide circle reticle or something to ensure that you can't place accurate fire in midair outside of, say, 200m? Obviously, that number came from my butt, but you get the picture -- jump sniping killed my unit, and while there is a little bit of a revenge trip with seeing the system neutered, the game itself is better served if the poptarts just learn to do something that requires a little more skill.
Well it depends on what a wolfpack is to you. If it's a bunch of fast mediums and heavies, 2 scouts and an assault or two, that's bloody awesome. If it's 2 lances of RVN3Ls and EMC Commandos with a couple Flamer Cicadas for good measure, that's bloody arse annoying. I never had a problem with Poptarting Highlanders or poptarting in general, except for when I'm on a bad team, playing badly. Why? Because with a bad team, any kind of tactic is deadly to you. With a good team, the only time a Highlanding poppytart is dangerous is when it's in the air, and by then you and your teammate have already got it covered and hit it with lasers whenever it dares to show it's head.
So much of this looks like hardcores being upset because a part of the game mechanic they hate has gone unresolved. The poptart menace. But hell they don't seem to care much about all the other crap that is broken with the game, because they've adapted. Adapted? Hell, they're 'cores, they've bloody thrived. But poptarts just ruin the game for them. Do I sound a bit salty? Possibly because so many people sound satisfied now that the JJ shake is in, and fun is back in town, because the game is perfect again, now that poptarting is gone forever.
Guess what? It wasn't the poptarts. It was the free damage. They could damage you for free without getting damaged in return, because cooperating with a rock is safer than trying to work together with 7 other pugs. Meanwhile, you're trying to follow a group of slowmoving targets across a field, while gangs of rockrats take armor evaporating potshots at 1000m.
When you have a team, name a situation where poptarts are even dangerous. They're standing in one spot, only have a limited firing window, which also happens to be a guaranteed opportunity to damage them. Often times they're in dangerous places so they can get good firing angles. So if you have someone to cover them, and someone else to draw their fire, poptarts are just ******* hot TOASTER PASTRIES.
And I pilot a poptart(sometimes). My favorite mech. Meowlissa, named after the
heir to house Katzen. (Hey, it's canon. And she gots a biiiig cannon!) They are far from invincible, have never been intimidating or game ruining, so long as more than one person is working to defeat the other team.
So I just can't see how 2PPC and jumpjets is somehow more dangerous or game breaking than 6 PPC alphas. I had a whole team of shitbillies crying about my highlander, when, in the end I barely broke 6th place. And I survived, because I didn't have an XLengine, and spent most of my time running away and evading fire when they all decided to try to kill me.
And in real life, lets not pretend like a poptarting mech wouldn't have some way to compensate for the mech shaking. My freaking cellphone is smarter than that. This is just a bandaid to make a vocal sector of hardcores happy. I'm willing to try some things, but that reticle shake has got to go. If you want to up the difficulty, make it like ******* gunsights where the slightest millimeter off means feet to yards of targetting difference. Don't make my reticle bounce all around the screen like it's attached to a spring! The thing is not a space shuttle trying to lift off.
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