Lightfoot, on 04 July 2013 - 07:30 PM, said:
If you remove Alpha-Strikes from the game it is no longer MechWarrior. MechWarrior invented the term Alpha-Strike (as far as I know) so suggesting it's removal is unacceptable. There is no problem with MWO except that the mechs are not tough enough. You don't remove iconic elements of gameplay to fix minor imbalances. You all really need to take a breather and stop freaking out about some minor inconsistencies.
It would still be MechWarrior (neither the tabletop nor the first MW game had group fire) and no, the term was not invented by MechWarrior. The gameplay element may be iconic, but only in the way it damages the gameplay. In fact, when making the conversion - considered incredibly difficult by some - from tabletop to real-time, group fire is the biggest offender. Actually it isn't since it would break the tabletop game as well, in reality it's just the epitome of the pinpoint aiming issue that causes problems for the conversion.
Also I don't understand how inability to group fire would make lights less survivable, since the best counter to lights is smacking them with heavy concentrated fire. And no, a shotgun spread isn't the best tool against lights, concentrated fire is. And since that's the best way to kill everything and because it's breaking the gameplay and balance, it has to go. In addition to damage, range, heat, ammo, weight and size that determine the weapon balance in TT, MW(O) has pinpoint alpha -boatibility as an overwhelmingly important balancing factor for all weapons. I'm afraid it's going to be very hard to balance that against anything.
About group fire being an element of skill and variety in the game, consider this: "You should group fire as much damage into one spot
whenever possible". Now everyone knows it's basically the only way to go for almost every situation in the game. That's not skill or diversity, rather the opposite.
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