A minor thought on this subject. I've been playing since closed beta started, actually joined and played a little before then in august of 2012. Lrms have been all over the place in terms of effectiveness and typically, there's ALWAYS in any given time, those who feel they CAN deal with the worst of LRM and those who feel they CAN'T it's too much, impossible... unbeatable.
Duh, right?
Thing is, in almost all times both camps are right. Many of those who CAN deal with LRMs know all the cover and stick to it religiously, working with friends and allies who will do their damndest to deny any locks, tag and narc spotting. They can do this because they know the maps well, the mechs well and the positions well. They've trained just where to go, they know what angles the missiles can come in on and how to make them eat hillside. Often they have used missiles themselves, having a good idea of how their arcs and speed works, such that they know when they need to seek cover or hit thier jumpjets to mitigate an incoming volley, making more of it miss than hit.
Those who CAN'T deal with the LRMs and complain about LRM easy mode often (not always) have never used LRMs extensively, they also have not spent the hard hours in many cases being rained on by LRMs in their various previous incarnations, when they have been both faster and slower and often far more damaging. These people also very often have developed a sort of paralysis about LRMs... I see it happen all the time. For example, Forest Colony conquest, starting on the dish side for my team, we march with lights taking the central cap point and I am moving under the arch by that cap point, in a victor with an allied stalker ahead of me. An enemy spider spotter above the cave ridge is tagging the stalker, so rather than charging ahead into the cave or tight against the wall to avoid the arcing missiles from b3, the stalker stops and starts to ponderously turn in place, blocking the whole arch for myself, two crabs and an atlas ddc who was just closing in to offer ecm cover. The spider drops off the cliff face and arty strikes us. Cluster F... this happens all the time, and it's from panic.
Panic happens, I get it. It's great to exploit on the enemy side, it frustrates the heck out of me on my side. When it happens it can make an enemy team that normally would roll my team actually not so formidable, gives us a dynamic chance to exploit. Same the other way around, many good teams know some part of my team will panic... perhaps unaffiliated pugs, or perhaps part of those group dropping with me. The thing is, matches should be much more dynamic, such that good behaviours like sticking close to cover are useful, but also there's a point to not always hiding and the "skill" that is encouraged is being able to dynamically adapt to varied fighting conditions.
As things are, LRMs are both OP
AND UP(under powered) based on how well the users
AND the defenders know the map. When you play on the same play ground again and again, of course you learn how to exploit it. So new players and those who have not yet caught on, even after a long while (perhaps with numerous rage quits or "breaks" till they fix lurms) are not entirely wrong saying how unrealistic things are... in a realistic and reasonable sim of this nature, we should not be able to memorize and practice every single battlefield location, finding the optimal sniper nests, missile perches and dialing in angles of attack with our missiles so that we can dead fire our missiles just as effectively as if we have locks. Almost never is a battle fought on the same ground in the same way, by the same people twice. Skill lies in adapting, not memorizing battle grounds that never change - and it can frustrate the hell out of folks who have been trying to adapt and play the game from that point of view.
The people who feel their missiles are Underpowered, they've got some points too. If they were playing in constantly changing terrain and they could not necessarily know how it would play out every time, where the choke points develop, where they always can get their snipers ranged... then they would find difficulty using missiles that have the hang time of a loitering UAV. Opportunties to strike targets moving between one hill top and another in plain sight using jump jets are wasted because these missiles arc and adjust so slowly, even if they do have a good turn radius when the target is narced/tagged. The 160m/s missiles oddly group and land so poorly that even massive "land whales" like direwolves and warhawks can make it between cover locations IF THEY USE THEM, without concentrated hits from lrms. It takes narcing and tagging and techniques like firing, breaking lock and then reaquiring in order to get these missiles to dive and avoid cover - an aspect of actual adaption and skill that DOES exist in LRM usage. So they are not easy mode, when they are being used effectively the user takes alot of risks and needs support locks if they are going to hit any opponents even remotely using cover.
Lots of calls have come forth to rework LRMs and little change has come of it. Likely this is because at this point, with an inability to have dynamic maps the current LIMITED variety of maps in rotation, it is too easy to memorize maps and practice to exactly hit with missiles even without locks, regularly done by teams who train together extensively. Better LRMs would be even more OP under these static map conditions. Slower LRMs or further nerfing LRMs at this point would encourage their abandonment altogether, as has happened many times in the past. This could be seen in the introduction of CW, as the maps were new and not known/ranged, the direct fire was dominant - and numerous comments and calls for the CW maps to be made available for training grounds came forth.
As time passed and the number of CW matches under belts grew, lrms become more common, because the players have a better sense of the dead fire ranges and perches for missiles, sniping and the like. When dynamic battles are the norm, LRMs are not up to the task of realistic, effective use... at least not without a lot of team work. Once maps are memorized and the randomness is reduced some, then they make their appearance and grow to be OP. The calls for better cover and nerf OP Lurms grow, maps are revamped to give more cover etc., but it's all fairly predictable and stems from this issue of static, learnable, unchanging maps.
Edited by Mad Porthos, 26 February 2015 - 07:52 AM.
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XXXBunnyXXX, on 26 February 2015 - 06:33 AM, said:
