467 replies to this topic

[Scratx]

I suspect the problem is that everybody who's playing on group queues is also counted on those stats... and they don't have any reason (beyond being capped PER GROUP to not having more than 3 per weight class) not to fatten up on the tonnage.

Which results in a large bias to heavy and assaults.

It is ironic. But it's really unlikely to be possible to enforce 3/3/3/3 within the group queue. The PUGs...

Well, maybe PGI should slap a tonnage limit based on the size of the group after all, on top of 3/3/3/3... (assuming my suspicion is right)

[Vweegit]

I'm one of the biggest advocates for lights around, but right now, I have hardly touched my Jenner. I'm too busy eliting out all of the shiny new toys. The Clan lights don't offer alot to my playstyles - they're slow. They certainly have great utility and firepower, but with as hard as some of the builds are hitting now, being in a slow light is not my idea of a good time.

The Jenner is still a ton of fun, and I'm not seeing any drop in my scores. I imagine alot of people are like me in that they're just busy playing with the shiny new toys.

[Alistair Winter]

Adiuvo, on 03 July 2014 - 08:02 AM, said:

Trust me in my low Elo games where people stand still I do MAJOR damage. Like, I got a whole 400!! Beat that metacheezers!!!

Pro tip, bro. If you take the Locust, you can get to the disconnects first. Just take them out limb by limb for extra C-bills. It's what makes the Locust balanced.

[Scratx]

Alistair Winter, on 03 July 2014 - 08:30 AM, said:

Pro tip, bro. If you take the Locust, you can get to the disconnects first. Just take them out limb by limb for extra C-bills. It's what makes the Locust balanced.

Just make sure it's Skirmish or Conquest, though. Otherwise we may see a "DEFENSE TURRET has killed <Poor Locust>"....

[Deathlike]

As I've said before... this is working as intended™.

3/3/3/3 or whatever the group queue is producing (4 of one class max, for the moment) WILL NOT CHANGE people's lack of use for Lights.

Great for me soloing (getting shot by the underhive is a sad commentary). Even better when you beat the crap out of the opfor with something small in the big boy queue.

Too bad, rewards and TTK is still too short.

Nothing has changed there.

[Hellcat420]

not many people like using light mechs, its always been that way, and the new crapmaker wont change that, because you cant force people to like something they don't like.

[Alistair Winter]

Hellcat420, on 03 July 2014 - 08:37 AM, said:

not many people like using light mechs, its always been that way, and the new crapmaker wont change that, because you cant force people to like something they don't like.

Strange, it says you joined in feb 2012. Did you forget the Age of Squawk? People loved playing light mechs when they were the most powerful mechs in the game. But having one of the cheapest mechs in the game be the #1 killer was bad for business, I guess. After a few days of playing, everyone could afford the RVN-3L, so you'd regularly see 4 of them in a match, sometimes more. Not to mention Jenners and ECM Commandos.

Right now we have a hero assault mech (Dragon slayer) and a $55 heavy mech (Timber wolf) as the #1 killer, but that's not such a big deal, for some reason.

Funny how that works, innit?

Edited by Alistair Winter, 03 July 2014 - 09:10 AM.

[DONTOR]

Alistair Winter, on 03 July 2014 - 08:18 AM, said:

They should have released as many light mechs as heavy mechs, we could have avoided this whole situation.

Live and learn though.

Wut? They did release as many lights as heavies. They just arent as great as the heavier mechs, not that they are bad but they dont fill the role of a traditonal IS light. Myst lynx, and fire moth however! We really need those.

[Vassago Rain]

SgtMagor, on 03 July 2014 - 08:27 AM, said:

If anything I'm surprised med mechs are showing such a low percentage.

Everybody is grinding madcats.

[Reitrix]

Hate to say i told you so, but i told you so.

Back when they announced the idea of "release valves" if a specific weight class gets a long queue time i stated that it would blow the purpose of 4x3 out of the water, as people would simply flood the queue with the Heavies and Assaults and get their matches anyway, leading to the same issue we had before of Heavies and Assaults being the most common 'Mechs on the field, leading backwards to everyone dropping in the biggest 'Mech they can because theres so much damned firepower on the battlefield.

I still think the solution is bloody simple. Apply a bonus based on Weight class to c-bills on damage done (more c-bills per point of damage compared to Assaults).

Lights scoring 450~ ish damage would get the same c-bills as an Assault who did 900 or so. As an example.

[FupDup]

If the weight classes themselves were balanced, we wouldn't need to worry about certain ones being too rare or too common...

[Reitrix]

FupDup, on 03 July 2014 - 09:52 AM, said:

If the weight classes themselves were balanced, we wouldn't need to worry about certain ones being too rare or too common...

How do you "Balance" something that is inherently unbalanced by original design? A Light 'Mech was never meant to do what an Assault 'Mech can do, same in reverse.

Say what you mean by "Balance"

[Sandslice]

DONTOR, on 03 July 2014 - 09:35 AM, said:

Wut? They did release as many lights as heavies. They just arent as great as the heavier mechs, not that they are bad but they dont fill the role of a traditonal IS light. Myst lynx, and fire moth however! We really need those.

Clans have 2 of each, so not counting those.

Light: Locust, Commando, Spider, Raven, Firestarter, Jenner (6)
Medium: Cicada, Blackjack, Centurion, Hunchback, Trebuchet, Griffin, Shadow Hawk, Wolverine, Kintaro (9)
Heavy: Dragon, Quickdraw, Thunderbolt, Catapult, JagerMech, Cataphract, Orion (7)
Assault: Awesome, Victor, Stalker, BattleMaster, Highlander, Banshee, Atlas (7)

So there are fewer light chassis than any other class.

I suspect the reasons we're seeing fewer lights are:
-Power creep due to Clantech; being hit by an ER Medium is about as bad, from about the same ranges out, as being hit by an IS Large, for example.
-Mad Cats.
-The trench-sniper / derecho-of-lurms meta that complicates closing and/or causes people to try to play "light with big gun."
-People playing around with Clan or Phoenix or whatever other 'Mechs.
-Timber Wolves.
-Certain maps that don't allow lights to have a lot of places to cover-cover and close.
-Catapults with actual arms AND missile-ears.

So yeah. I still pull out my Jenners, though.

[Alistair Winter]

DONTOR, on 03 July 2014 - 09:35 AM, said:

Wut? They did release as many lights as heavies.

I used a rhetorical device known as sarcasm to ridicule people who use lame excuses to explain why no one's playing light mechs.

[FupDup]

Reitrix, on 03 July 2014 - 10:00 AM, said:

How do you "Balance" something that is inherently unbalanced by original design? A Light 'Mech was never meant to do what an Assault 'Mech can do, same in reverse.

Say what you mean by "Balance"

Each mech/weight class should have some kind of "role" it can perform that assists its team in winning. The game should be designed such that an "optimal" team would want to cover multiple roles, rather than just spamming certain specific mech types.


Right now, the game is set up such that the best way to win is to generally steamroll over the enemy team and then hunt down survivors and/or capture objectives. It creates too much of an emphasis on mechs that carry more armor and firepower (heavy and assault classes), and marginalizes those that are made for mobility (medium and light classes). And you get way better payment for farming assists/kills/damage than anything else, which exasperates the issue.

[zhajin]

the already low % has dropped since clans. many players wants to play their clan mechs and the clan lights just do not fit well. IS lights are still viable but not as popular. there just is not real incentive to play lights, but that is nothing new.

Edited by zhajin, 03 July 2014 - 10:10 AM.

[Sandpit]

The %'s were never going to change. People will play what people want to play. The only reason that will change is to give players a reason to WANT to play lights and mediums. No amount of forcing is going to help that and until PGI understands that, and understands more options for players and how they want to play while giving them incentives to play other mechs and weight classes, the meta, force compositions, etc. are NEVER going to change.

Sure there will always be a steady influx of new players that will help field and populate numbers for those weight classes but they'll fall right in line with the other 90% of the players in the game eventually, leaving another new crop to perpetuate the cycle.

[Reitrix]

FupDup, on 03 July 2014 - 10:04 AM, said:

Each mech/weight class should have some kind of "role" it can perform that assists its team in winning. The game should be designed such that an "optimal" team would want to cover multiple roles, rather than just spamming certain specific mech types.


Right now, the game is set up such that the best way to win is to generally steamroll over the enemy team and then hunt down survivors and/or capture objectives. It creates too much of an emphasis on mechs that carry more armor and firepower (heavy and assault classes), and marginalizes those that are made for mobility (medium and light classes). And you get way better payment for farming assists/kills/damage than anything else, which exasperates the issue.

I agree with this whole post. lol.

Also just finished a match where almost the entire enemy team was LRM builds.
On Alpine.
Alpine needs some friggen cover. Was taken from 80% yellow armor, to crit red all Torso sections, lost both arms and most of my left leg in my K2 in about 3 seconds.

But back to OP, above is the description for this match just now:

3 Mediums, 1 Light each. Everything else is heavy/Assaults, with LRMs. Not exactly a fun match to break cover for a half second and get 400 missiles flying at you. for a full 15 minutes.

[Jon Gotham]

Bigbacon, on 03 July 2014 - 08:20 AM, said:

it isn't helping that the fall damage is ridiculous on the lights.

not a L2P b.s......

there is no incentive to play as a light. you die easily, you can't carry all the meta,dakka,weapons so you don't get as many cbills and xp unless you are just really good in them.

everyone just wants lots of guns and lots of armor.

I like playing lights, it is almost all I use because I have fun in them and i like the fast pace but folks like me are far and few.

and right now, my bold statement above is KILLING light mechs before they can even try to be productive, specially ones that can't use JJ or won't carry JJ...the damage is unavoidable no matter how careful you are it also isn't a whole lot of fun when your fast mech is now a slow mech because you have to attempt to slowly navigate EVERYTHING. you either say on perfectly flat terrain or you start losing legs fast.

Agreed. All the anti light bs was just that, bs before. they are op, they can hurt me! I'm i a heavy I should gib them /cry etc.

To do well in a light requires serious skills, now even more so. They were already barely represented-now even less so.

My poor little kit fox....

[Sandpit]

Reitrix, on 03 July 2014 - 10:00 AM, said:

How do you "Balance" something that is inherently unbalanced by original design? A Light 'Mech was never meant to do what an Assault 'Mech can do, same in reverse.

Say what you mean by "Balance"

you "balance" it by offering a reason for players to play those weight classes. As it stands now this game is nothing more than arena deathmatches on repeat. The entire goal of the game is to bring out the biggest and baddest you can and take out the enemy forces in a straight up "kill em all" gameplay. Even the game modes with cap points tend to end with one side destroyed.

Until that fundamental design is changed no amount of MM, Elo, rules of 3, etc. is going to change the dynamics of the game.

I understand what PGI was thinking with the whole MM system. I understand the reasoning behind the rule of 3. It's just not going to work in this regard. It's already proven that, which is why it had to go back to the drawing board and have all these release valves put in place.

Until PGI switches their mode of thinking from "this is how WE want the game to be played" to "We've given players every option we can think of to let them play it their way" and understands that their vision for MWO isn't always going to coincide with the players (you know, those guys who put money into PGI's pockets?) there's not going to be much change in this or things like the metas that float through.

I don't understand why anyone (PGI included) would think for one second that the rule of 3 would somehow magically make players want to use lights and mediums. It's just not going to happen. The only thing that will change is you'll get a slight bump in their usage from some and others as units and such experiment with force compositions.

Rule of 3 isn't "bad", it's just not going to "fix" many, if any, of the current problems with the MM system, variety of mechs, meta, etc.