and there's a very good reason we never see them - they just plain out and out suck. their weapon mounts are horrible, they'r gimped in some way, it doesn't fit your playstyle, etc. most times there's 1 overwhelming favorite model within the chassis that everyone plays and every other model of that chassis is only ever piloted when it's being basic'd - but as soon as it's basic'd you strip the weapons and modules off and then it sits collecting layers of dust in your mech bay, never to be piloted again
wouldn't nice to see some variety in the PUG queue? have a damn good reason to dust off the garbage mechs just taking up mech bay space?
PGI knows how much each individual mech model is played - i'm sure they can make a list of mechs in order from most played to least played. and to clarify, i don't mean a general chassis like all the Commandos counting as 1 model, i mean individual models like COM-1D or the Death's Knell
well, what if every thursday PGI internally makes a list of every mech that was played in the previous 7 days and pick either 20 of the least played mechs in MWO, (or alternatively 5 of the least played light mechs, 5 med, 5 heavy, and 5 assault mechs). and as an incentive for you to play those mechs over the same old same old, PGI gives +15% CB and +15% XP to each of those mechs for the next 7 days.
so every week a new list comes out, and theoretically that new list will come out with 20 new mechs because hopefully people will have started playing last week's list of mechs and they should no longer be on the bottom 20. now if it so happened that a mech re-appears in that list 2 weeks in a row, then the 2nd week it should get +20% CB and +20% XP to give further incentive. 3rd week +25% CB/XP, and so on - if it's THAT bad that nobody plays it even with a bonus then at some point people will cave when the bonus gets big enough and it will finally disappear from the list for at least 1 week
if PGI chooses they could also put those 20 mechs on sale for 30% off that week to encourage people to buy them - i'm suggesting both a CB and XP bonus because if you already own the mech you'l prefer the CB, and if you don't own it an XP bonus might encourage you to buy it and level it
Clan mechs might have to be handled differently due to them being able to change their pods - instead of (for example) the Nova-Prime or Nova-B being on the list, maybe all the Novas would be included as 1 model - if Novas are being played less than the bottom 5 IS med mech models (which would be doubtful, but who knows)
i think lights will really benefit from this since they usually have the smallest queue % and a bonus is just what they need to boost their #'s - they are the most likely weight class which individual models might end up sticking on the 'bottom 20' for multiple weeks
Edited by JagdFlanker, 24 March 2015 - 10:10 AM.