Goose, on 18 March 2014 - 10:07 AM, said:
I get the impression real scouting is a point of derision in this game.
I see a metric-buttload of hunter-killer builds with nether Beagle nor TAG on them, and can only assume they are on TS3 with somebody, 'cause they don't often type in a map coordinates or anything useful. They also seem to only push the R key as often as the rest of the team, focusing in on everybody else' group-fire target, and tunnel-vision like that isn't very informative for us without LoS to the donnybrook. Add on the "stick with
teh blob" meme that came about as the "counter" to ECM …
Is that it? Does anybody scout at all? If they do, are they willing to share how and when? Or is it something that might happen if, and only
if, both Achievement-
and cash-rewards get boosted by a factor of
eight or so?
Well, people used to scout, and they will again. The problem is that right now, the rewards of that role aren't worth the risk and skill requirement to most people. It's all because of the Highlander... I shall explain:
When the Highlander came out, Poptarting really came into its own. Finally, there was an Assault chassis with jump jets, and with a pinpoint alpha that could smash almost half of an Atlas' forward center torso, it quickly became
the dominant Assault 'mech - particularly in competitive play. The Assault-class firepower and tonnage really made the difference - and the PPC Poptart meta was born. The balance issue was clear, but PGI wanted to preserve the poptart playstyle without allowing it to completely dominate the game. So they started adding various changes and nerfs - jump jet shake, Gauss charging, nerfing the PPC back down to sanity - in an attempt to preserve the poptart playstyle while freeing up the meta. They succeeded, ion fact, but the way the meta expanded created problems of its own (this is typically the case with balance changes in any game, and why balance is an ongoing process.)
The nerfs to poptarting, along with the release of newer 'Mech designs, made dakka much more obviously valuable. Since poptarting was harder, and not quite so damaging, many people switched to long-range autocannon builds focusing on suppression fire. Since sniper/dakkas don't like (or often need) to close, and poptarts don't like to be out in the open, this caused the engagement range to remain open for longer, leading to the resurgence of LRM boats in the hands of the mathematically challenged. And
all of these builds range from annoying to outright murder for any light attempting to scout the enemy, depending on enemy marksmanship and the exigencies of war. Lights were starting to decline at this point - both in the literal sense of not being played, and in the awful pun sense of "declining" to leave the group to scout. I had ECM lights seriously tell me that they were "ECM support," and that I shouldn't ask them to go 500m away to look for the enemy before we got ambused. I was in an Atlas D-DC on one of these occasions.
Enter the Firestarter - specifically, the Ember. This 'mech is far and away the most overall powerful light right now, particularly for backstabbing and wolfpacking larger 'mechs. It has good hit boxes, a huge number of hardpoints, jump jets and real arms for dogfighting. Unlike the Jenner, whose CT is a giant damage magnet, the Firestarter spreads damage readily, and while this does result in losing an arm more often,
that just makes most builds more heat efficient. Its release made several other Light chassis variants completely obsolete, and completely changed the way many lights view their role on the battlefield.
Because the Firestarter is ideally suited for coring out big, slow 'Mechs from behind, many light pilots drop with the goal of doing that - and only that. Since a pack of Firestarters can quickly decimate most other lights, solo dropping Light pilots have taken to avoiding the enemy's main body whenever possible, opting for ER Large Lasers and PPCs instead of traditional close-range armament, or simply hanging back with the main body to try and backstab themselves. With so many people focusing on long-range sniping and backstabbing (at the expense of their heavier teammates, who typically suffer more from lack of intel,) very few lights feel that the trouble and danger of scouting is worth the rewards.
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