Wintersdark, on 04 June 2014 - 11:19 AM, said:
snip on stock mechs
I would suggest checking out Stock Mode event days.
Stock 'Mechs in the context of MWO work perfectly fine for their intended roles they are designed and balanced for. This is a common misconception that the builds are alright horrible. Even lowly Commando's or a Cataphract CTF-4X work excellent in Stock Mode.
I should point out that Stock campaigns existed in the multiplayer leagues for previous games since they were immensely popular. Those games also had a selectable difficulty level for servers known simply as "Stock Mode."
In MWO, players have not really had the chance to play Stock battles (except now mainly in Private battles) in a public setting to really get a feel for it. The only option available is the public mode, which in itself allows the use of the Mech Lab, which is also a source of balance problems.
I should point out that the old Beta of MPBT3025 was also designed around battling it out in the Inner Sphere, with various Factions, on various Planets, with only Stock 'Mechs from Battle 'Tech. The people that tried that Beta thought it was pretty awesome.