I've said it a hundred times already and I'll say it again:
Boating does make complete sense. The way warfare works, you want to be able to kill the other guy faster, for higher range and with less personal skill involved. That's why we're putting targeting computers and such everywhere, since it means we don't have to school soldiers on how to fire X gun for 20 years and have them do it less effectively than a computer would.
Mechs, however, do not make sense. If you want them to have a marginal chance of making sense, you must use tools that don't make sense. That's where the fun comes from.
Yes, it would make sense just to aim a Tomahawk at the cockpit of a mech and fire it. That's boating, it makes sense from a military standpoint and completely obsoletes something that does not.
However, if I'm playing a game where I'm supposed to be a guy in shorts piloting a massive machine of doom that is able to shrug off a battalion of tanks, then I want to feel like I'm doing that. If I wanted a real warfare simulation, I'd play ArmA instead.
Another example would be Tribes. Does it make sense to use projectile weapons? **** No. We switched to firearms for a very good reason. However, Tribes is what Tribes is and that projectile weapon aiming mixed with the massive mobility of players is where all the fun is coming from. Add real weapons (boats) and you kill that fun and can't understand why the game's loosing so many players (yes, I'm talking about Ascend now).
Edited by Adridos, 09 October 2013 - 08:48 AM.