147 replies to this topic

[Reported for Inappropriate Name]

William Mountbank, on 28 June 2013 - 02:37 AM, said:

I'm not sure what you mean here? Light mechs need more tactical sense than other mechs because they have to use the terrain for armour and need to choose targets and engagements much more carefully because of their lower DPS and likelihood of operating alone against multiple foes.

this was the original intention, before role warfare went out the window at least.

William Mountbank, on 28 June 2013 - 02:37 AM, said:

Plus, try dropping in a light mech and see how much impunity to collisions they have when their own team mates trample them at the beginning.

I was there for that if the founders tag wasn't a dead giveaway, and that's one of many reasons knockdown was removed to be reworked. (although I did enjoy knocking over teammates in my atlas)


I'll admit with the introduction of pinpoint high alpha mechs it's gotten a little trickier, but light metagame has more or less remained the same since knockdown was removed.

going fast used to negate hit registry.
not stopping ever will soon be addressed by terrain, adding potential slowdowns will mean successful light pilots will have to pick their attack routes.

and when knockdown is once again added, the little issue of clipping enemies and getting behind them no matter what they try will be addressed.

once these three things have been fully complete, there will be no more light mech mosh pits, and only the most intelligent or clever pilots will do combat well in light mechs. As it stands any two braincell ***** like myself can slap together a good build and do well without thinking twice about what i'm doing, however it's not going to last, much like many other crutches currently relied upon and/or abused.

Edited by Battlecruiser, 28 June 2013 - 03:04 AM.

[LordDante]

@ OP do you know what kind of mindset u need to strap ur a$$ into a spider or comando? do u have the slightest idea how long and how PAINFULL it is to learn the "scoutgame" and afterwards the "agressive recon game" ??? do ya? it takes month!! and if u dont quit ( and beleave me the most people do quit ) and u master ur ride, u will be a steelhard, fearless pain in the A$$ of any assault and u will take punishment and u will punish and people like you will cry OP OP OP but its not the mech, its the PILOT that makes lights OP ! We rock, we slash and slay or we die trying. we dear sir are the true assasins of the battlefield, be lucky u got away to tell the tale !

[William Mountbank]

But I don't think it is possible to drop in a light and do well for anyone, I think the current light pilots who do well will be doing much the same when collisions come back, and with the current movement nerfs.
Maybe we play in different Elo brackets (based on some of the pilots I drop with my Elo must be negative...), because in my matches pilot skill is very, very clear in lights. I already think light mechs have become a kind of 'self-handicap' for some pilots, and the standard pugger who decides to try out one of these annoying lights he so rarely sees, pretty quickly finds he dies early and with low damage. So he just goes straight back to the Stalker.

[krolmir]

Light mechs are fine, if your patient enough to pic your shots. That's the problem with most pilots on an assault, they get frustrated, start alpha'ing trying to one shot kill the light, than they overheat, and then they pay for it. Also , continually sawing back and forth will spread their low damage alphas, follow that up with a good fake out technique, and even the best light pilots will go down pr break off to mess with more crunchy prey. Another tip, don't fight them in water....

[topgun505]

Lights are easily one shorted. The only light which might have a hit box issue would be the Spider as its hit boxes appear to be paper thin .... But even that I would be hesitant to change.

[Lostdragon]

I believe there are hit registration issues but I don't believe it is confined just to lights. I have been blown to pieces on a number of occasions in my Jenner and I have smashed plenty of lights in heavy and assault mechs. I think maybe the spider has some issues because they seem hard to kill in any mech but I do not see this problem against other lights. I have no more problems hitting most lights with an AC20, GR, or PPC than I do hitting anything else. After the recent hot fix I rarely see this issue at all.

[Kunae]

Battlecruiser, on 28 June 2013 - 03:02 AM, said:

I was there for that if the founders tag wasn't a dead giveaway, and that's one of many reasons knockdown was removed to be reworked. (although I did enjoy knocking over teammates in my atlas)

Knockdown was removed by Paul because he didn't like getting griefed by Goons.



No other reason.

[Tibs]

ok i play lights. i die one shoot no damage. bit if i find some people can snipe but cant shot moveing mechs, some can shot moving mechs well hard with snipeing. i see guy can do both i stay away. .. now i toke on 5 guys and hold them off only couse there good range and not at up cloae moving mechs. other times i get shot right away. so really matters if guys a vet and can shoot good .

[Rippthrough]

Light mech survivability is fine.

Light mech playability, however, is not

[Mawai]

Kutnarb, on 27 June 2013 - 12:44 PM, said:

Just my thoughts spurred from lots of playing lately.

I think that light mechs are way too survivable at the moment. People will come back with the obvious, "lights are fast." Yes that is true, but there are also a ton of experienced pilots with great aim that are even used to compensating slightly for lag issues.

If you are a medium, heavy, or assault and you make a tactical error like getting in a bad position, you will pay for it dearly. Usually there is no coming back from that mistake. If you're a light though, you can make all the mistakes you want while running around in the middle of the enemy team. All the while not needing to actually pilot well because there aren't collisions anymore. The one exception is overheating/standing still. While in movement weapons seem to do less dmg to lights. PPC boats getting direct hits on light torsos and that armor spot only turning yellow, when the same shot to a heavy would totally strip the armor or worse. LRM 80 salvos with tag and only 10 missiles hit the light. SRMs seem to do nothing at all at the moment.

I like lights, but a light being able to take down an Atlas because of these issues is just wrong. If you want there to actually be roles in the team, then there needs to be consequences for light mechs. They should fear going into the fray and use their inherent mobility and or ecm to position for advantages in giving intell and support to their team. Notice how nobody uses the new artillery/airstrike capability? If lights had to be careful I bet more would use those items...which I think was the purpose for their implementation.

I've played a Jenner extensively (along with all my other mechs)

1) Most light pilots who run into a group of enemies die ... I've killed enough of them in medium/heavy and assault mechs.
2) Sometimes lights can run into a few enemies ... usually they will be weaving around them using the following strategy
- avoid running directly at an opponent
- try to run around so that you use the opposing mechs to shield you from other opponents (watching an opponent blow up a team mate in a melee trying to hit you is loads of fun ... though it only happens rarely)
- use jump jets and frequent turns to make motion unpredictable
- run close and across the field of view of opposing mechs
- these strategies minimize the damage taken and one wrong turn or bad luck and the light mech is toast
- No matter how often I have done this I end up with significant damage ... however, it is often distributed over the mech so that instead of being dead ... I am damaged.
3) Focus fire on the legs. A legged light is a dead light.
4) Light pilots should always be looking for that straggler on the opposing team. A pair of lights can very effectively deal with most other mechs if they do not have support.

Overall, considering how few lights seem to be on most drops, I would say that light mechs don't need to be nerfed further in terms of survivability.

[FactorlanP]

I saw someone reference K/D ratio being higher when piloting lights...

This can be explained without saying that Lights are too survivable.

During a match, Assaults and Heavies generally become priority targets. Lights are generally slated as secondary or tertiary targets. Simply because they aren't going to kill you in a few seconds like that Stalker with 17 erPPCs will... Allowing Lights a relatively easy time of it while the big guys duke it out.

So, typically, Light mechs are the last survivors on the losing side during most matches.

As the last survivors, they have the opportunity to finish off mechs that were damaged heavily during the main combat.

There are many many factors that account for K/D ratios that are unrelated to being too survivable.

Lights, as a class, are fine. By the way, I almost never pilot them myself.

Just my opinion.

Edited by FactorlanP, 28 June 2013 - 10:13 AM.

[Kutnarb]

William Mountbank, on 28 June 2013 - 02:13 AM, said:

Sorry, I do understand that it is frustrating to assault pilots that they have trouble hitting the smallest profile mech with their pinpoint weapons, but some of what you see is a technical issue that there is no solution for beyond making the Spider hitboxes larger than the mech itself, or reducing the max engine size, which seems to be a way of punishing players who already have to deal with a low damage output and low armour chassis.
When I get hit by an AC40, I can tell you my Spider goes to damaged internals from full armour. Everything else is a 100% miss for pinpoint weapons, surely?

Also, PC online gaming used to be a gentleman's game? I'm pretty sure I recall trolling in Doom2.

Were you that troll?

This isn't about frustration. I get frustrated with plenty of things in life. Heck married with 2 Chihuahuas...now that's frustration. I will specifically put myself into chassis with weapon loadouts that I know put me at a severe disadvantage because I just have fun with it. That actually is why I have all the light mechs I do. They are more challenging to play...typically.

This isn't a response to what you've posted, but I'm amazed at the sheer number of people that read the title of this post and then reflexively went off on a "lights aren't the problem...you are the problem" rant. I really think people are cherry picking one sentence, or even less and then running with it. This guy PEEFSmash actually started a thread about "you problem" after reading this thread which now has somewhere around 1 billion responses. It's all highlighting to me that I mistakenly thought these forums were a place to raise concerns for the devs to help make the game better. But it has been fun looking into the self-inflated minds of people like the aforementioned.

[Kutnarb]

Putting all posts here for ease of reading.

Kutnarb, on 27 June 2013 - 12:44 PM, said:

Just my thoughts spurred from lots of playing lately.

I think that light mechs are way too survivable at the moment. People will come back with the obvious, "lights are fast." Yes that is true, but there are also a ton of experienced pilots with great aim that are even used to compensating slightly for lag issues.

If you are a medium, heavy, or assault and you make a tactical error like getting in a bad position, you will pay for it dearly. Usually there is no coming back from that mistake. If you're a light though, you can make all the mistakes you want while running around in the middle of the enemy team. All the while not needing to actually pilot well because there aren't collisions anymore. The one exception is overheating/standing still. While in movement weapons seem to do less dmg to lights. PPC boats getting direct hits on light torsos and that armor spot only turning yellow, when the same shot to a heavy would totally strip the armor or worse. LRM 80 salvos with tag and only 10 missiles hit the light. SRMs seem to do nothing at all at the moment.

I like lights, but a light being able to take down an Atlas because of these issues is just wrong. If you want there to actually be roles in the team, then there needs to be consequences for light mechs. They should fear going into the fray and use their inherent mobility and or ecm to position for advantages in giving intell and support to their team. Notice how nobody uses the new artillery/airstrike capability? If lights had to be careful I bet more would use those items...which I think was the purpose for their implementation.

Kutnarb, on 27 June 2013 - 01:55 PM, said:

Like I said in OP, these are my observations and this is not a wine session. It may not look like I'm not experienced because I don't post often, but I have been playing since open beta release. I have seen all the changes in the game since that time. I have spent time in all weight classes and chassis.

Also, I have no problem with light mechs in general. I'm not jaded lol . It seems to me that the responses in this thread are becoming reflexive "i love light mechs and just because you may suck doesn't mean they're broken." Forgive me if I'm wrong on that. The issue I raise is one of game balance and my observations on how the light chassis take dmg vs other mechs. Along the lines of what Lefty Lucy commented on. The same shots on a light vs a heavy (even if they are both standing still) seems to do more dmg to the heavy. Almost like there is a bonus armor value on the light chassis.

Maybe it is a weapon convergence issue? (Even though it looks like your weapons are converging on the light they're actually not)

Also I think part of the problem is that lights aren't rewarded enough for doing the support roles they are supposed to. But I believe that is an ongoing discussion in other threads.

Kutnarb, on 27 June 2013 - 03:08 PM, said:

I tend towards the the heavy mechs as my prefered but I have own everything...think I'm up to 19 mech bays now (you're welcome PGI).

I agree with all that you just said. I don't think lights are noncombat. My point is that slugging it out isn't what they were intended for. I don't have a problem with a light taking down an Atlas in a 1v1 situation either. What I think needs tweaking right now is the dmg model. I see this type of situation all the time where the aforementioned atlas puts, for example, an ac20, 18srm, and a couple lasers into the light and they are hardly damaged. Damage / ton seems to be off with lights. But like I said, maybe it's more of a convergence issue, or even lag (although they say they've fixed those issues). Whatever the cause, I see lights surviving things they shouldn't just about every match.

And to all those that are and will continue to respond with "you have to hit the light" just save your time and don't type it lol. I covered the base assumption that you are hitting the target in the OP.

I think the main point here is that if they didn't mess with the damage model on lights and instead gave them better rewards for doing supportive tasks it would make the game much more interesting. And that wouldn't stop the guys that want to get into the fray to rumble from doing so. It would just show off more of their skill if they survived it.

Kutnarb, on 27 June 2013 - 04:10 PM, said:

Damage taken per ton, not given as a light. As for the rest of your post...calm down and act like a decent human being.






Yeah could be.

Kutnarb, on 27 June 2013 - 05:19 PM, said:

Thank God someone is listening and not turning this into a "lights vs assault" my dad can beat yours up. Cheers WarZ ~

Kutnarb, on 27 June 2013 - 08:48 PM, said:

I agree, but the point of this thread is supposed to be on how lights take damage. You should definitely be able to do very well as a light, but not by circle strafing an assault/heavy/medium like a robot.

Because people have responded so typically by saying others suck and don't play lights enough I took my spider out for a spin. Did great...somewhere around 230 dmg, took down an Awesome, tagged the entire time. All the while running in and around the enemy team...usually 4 of them present. I specifically stopped on 2 occasions to take hits.


...my armor didn't go below yellow.

Kutnarb, on 28 June 2013 - 01:10 AM, said:

I have to say, that I'm really disappointed in this thread. I remember when online pc gaming was more of a gentlemen's game. I'm astonished at how immature and ignorant 70% (just plucked that number out of thin air) of the replies are here.

Did you even read the OP and the follow ups? I have to assume you can read because you can type. I'm not really sure how else I can describe the issue that spawned the post. The English language only has so many words. Wait, maybe I have to accuse someone of sucking really bad to persuade others reading this. No, that would just make me look pretty lame.

What exactly in my OP makes you believe this is a whine session? This is a forum for gameplay balance. Where else would you write a post about your observations that could perhaps make the game more balanced? And if you found the observations to be false then you could certainly share some empirical data to prove the point. But you don't. Instead you really talk yourself up while talking others down. I bet that really turns on the ladies...until they meet you.

I have been playing vs lights and getting this issue. As another example about an hour ago I was engaging a spider that was harassing the group of us. He landed from a jump jet flight while trying to change directions and was standing still for a second 113m away. I alpha'd 3ppc +2erppc to his torso and his armor state only blinked. I've also played my spider and been almost untouchable...but you would know that because you read that post in here too right? If you think that an experience player like myself and others that have commented in this thread about seeing the same thing are just terrible players then that just reinforces the impression most of us already have of you.

To all the people that left constructive comments it's been great and thanks for the info/talk. If you haven't seen this issue I'm happy for you and I commiserate with those that have. I think you can just about stick a fork in this thread, so I'll be seeing you all on the battlefield.

Kutnarb, on 28 June 2013 - 11:33 AM, said:

Were you that troll?

This isn't about frustration. I get frustrated with plenty of things in life. Heck married with 2 Chihuahuas...now that's frustration. I will specifically put myself into chassis with weapon loadouts that I know put me at a severe disadvantage because I just have fun with it. That actually is why I have all the light mechs I do. They are more challenging to play...typically.

This isn't a response to what you've posted, but I'm amazed at the sheer number of people that read the title of this post and then reflexively went off on a "lights aren't the problem...you are the problem" rant. I really think people are cherry picking one sentence, or even less and then running with it. This guy PEEFSmash actually started a thread about "you problem" after reading this thread which now has somewhere around 1 billion responses. It's all highlighting to me that I mistakenly thought these forums were a place to raise concerns for the devs to help make the game better. But it has been fun looking into the self-inflated minds of people like the aforementioned.

[Deathlike]

The surviveability is in part related to the poor HSR involved here... but ultimately lights are easy to kill/cripple because they actually have low armor.

Back in the day before any sort of HSR or improvement of netcode, people complained A LOT about Jenners and Raven 3Ls (more of the latter when ECM was implemented). The issue was that the poor netcode allowed such mechs to rule the field with impunity because what you shot was not what you hit.

Today, it's not as bad as those days, but there are actual HSR problems at work. However, you unfortunately sound a little bit like the anti-light whiners, suggesting that they seem to be OP in some form... which is not the case. Lights can occasionally get away with more since they are the focus of battle, but WHEN THEY ARE HIT, most of the damage that they do take is unfortunate crippling and unless you've played exclusively as a light pilot, you would understand this.

For the most part... saying that lights survive a lot is mostly a joke, and the only issue you're really aiming at is the inconsistency known as HSR. You're not going to convince veteran light mech pilots otherwise.

[Reported for Inappropriate Name]

i acttually kinda wanna buy a commando again. i had a lot of fun being the magic man with ecm and one er large laster. It was a lot like throwing rocks at zombies.

[Tezcatli]

I too have issue with lights. Mostly the ones with wierd hitboxes or perhaps it's just the slightest bit of a lag that makes a torso hit miss.

People say Assaults are dominant. And that's mostly true. But lights I see continually represented. However it's usually Jenners, Cicada(Yes It counts), Spiders, and Ravens. You hardly see Commandos as much. And I suspect the reason is they have bigger hit boxes that are easier to hit.

[stjobe]

Tezcatli, on 28 June 2013 - 01:02 PM, said:

But lights I see continually represented. However it's usually Jenners, Cicada(Yes It counts), Spiders, and Ravens. You hardly see Commandos as much. And I suspect the reason is they have bigger hit boxes that are easier to hit.

The 5-10 ton weight deficiency has more to do with it than any hitbox issues.

A Commando has very little armour and is quite difficult to stay alive in; you have to know what you're doing and not make a single mistake. Also, the fact that they only have four hard points, of two types (excluding the Death Knell here) also contributes. 1M+3E, 2M+2E, 3M+1E - doesn't make for big alphas and as we all know, alphas rule the game right now.

In short, it's the smallest thing on the field in a game that rewards tonnage disproportionally, and it's a low-alpha loadout in a game that rewards alpha disproportionally.

It's no surprise you don't see many of us.

[Diablobo]

I know something is horribly wrong when I can hit a fleeing Jenner with 3 PPCs and its paperdoll just turns yellow as he keeps on trucking along. Bullcr@p. That's either lousy hit detection, or lousy hitboxes. Either way it sucks.

[Voidsinger]

As someone rightly pointed out, in BT lore, Lights did need to run away screaming like little girls from Assaults. It took a phenomenal game for a Light to survive such an encounter.

Then again, BT had Battle Value, C-Bill costs and the threat of being "Dispossessed" as controls over total chaos on the battlefield.

In MWO:
-Assaults outnumber lights by about 3:1
-Both mechs cost about the same kitted out (XL engines cost)
-There are zero running costs
-Nearly every fight is too the death, there is no real retreat and fight another day.
-There are no repair costs.
-There are no production limits.
-Assaults by virtue of the reward system earn more C-bills and XP.
-It takes more willpower to stay in a light, and grind it up when you have the choice to go heavier, leading to specialised light pilots being rarer and more memorable.
-They removed the instakill SRM splash bug.
-HSR is really sucking at the moment, resulting in poor hit detection.
-The maps are all known quantities, the chokepoints known.
- and so on, ad infinitum.

What isn't acknowledged is that the push upwards means that Lights go live in a game as soon as "All Systems, Nominal". They have a massive workload, and rarely stick around one mech in Conquest (Assault is different). The rewards of playing a light are intangible, often just being more pleasing to play.

Survivability is a combination of factors, but the main one right now is HSR's horrendous hit detection (even lasers are headed to pre-HSR levels for me). That, and Streaks are less damaging, ECM doesn't work so well, and people have forgotten how they dealt with lights when they were much more potent than now.

Things may change for the better, with terrain features now starting to impede. This may mean collisions will soon return. Let's just hope they have the server power available.

[Lugh]

Tennex, on 27 June 2013 - 02:07 PM, said:

light survivability hasn't been good in a long time

And in a couple months time it will drop to zero when knockdowns are put back in...a still light is a dead light.

And Crotch hugging, warp exploiting light pilots will die like flies.