Hey Bishop. I see your question and I would hazard the reply that NOTHING actually went wrong with the Wolfhounds, hence you find yourself wondering why they were not massively adopted, abused and appreciated. Most other lights as they have come in over the past 3 years have been presaged by predictions of being DOA, unable to bring anything new to the table etc, etc. In many cases I think this put undue pressure on PGI to not make a mistake in either direction, but pushed them more in one direction or another with each successive pack, be it Phoenix, Clan Waves, Resistance Waves or even just the general tweaking process of each quirk pass... too much, then not enough, then different and never hitting any happy medium.
Wolfhounds manage to be one entry that has been consistently middling - no particular fanbase boosting it or detracting it before release, I think in part simply because it was both inner sphere and lacked jump jets when resistance 1 & 2 were being planned and executed. If the attention of the more vociferous meta players and comp teams had been on Inner Sphere Mechs and Resistance at in that period, they might have pushed the mech into having some more significant or even, dare I say OP Quirkening, agility buffs, yaw and pitch far better than any other humanoid mech... perhaps even nigh 360 twist light the sainted urbie. But no such pressure mounted to create a spectre of fear about performance of the wolfhound or even the panther, as a result they don't seem to have any obvious oddity or deviation, no special niche created to sooth fears of DOA-ness.
By and large I think those who often skew things one way or another at the time the wolfies were "gestating" were more concerned at their support or opposition of thunderbolts and concerns over the clan brands of mechs and what they wanted to see out of that flavor of upcoming mech goodness. If the resistance packs even caught their attentions, it was over the larger mechs and the insistence that none of them be the ppc gods that the thunderbolts appeared to be. Panther and Wolfhound seemed just the requisite light mechs to round each offering out and in each case something early on managed to shut theem out of discussion or campaigning for exceptional buffs or changes... limited hard points in panthers and no jump jets in wolfies just got a shrug and a DOA stamp from these, rather than a campaign because many more were spending their time demanding a fast CLAN LIGHT that didnt suck... and then rejoicing in it when they got the artic cheetah last summer.
But really, they dont suck. Not the slower ones, not the slightly faster one either. Jump jets are so very highly rated in some parts of the community, but many of the great old jenner pilots I once new ran few if any jump jets, not just because they were trying to maximize heat sinks and fire power, but because reliance on them could be a trap and get you into trouble, draw attention and REDUCE agility when you need it most. More jump jets could mean getting a greater height but also a longer period of consistent, predictable arc in the air. Landing also is/was associated with a split second of hesitation/immobility until you get some traction/acceleration and can start dodging again. So piloting a mech like the wolfhound can paradoxically make you less vulnerable and more manuverable, by eliminating the variable performance of jump jets and letting you simply focus on piloting and using terrain, rather than hopping over it all and playing at being an LAM.
Edited by Mad Porthos, 03 February 2016 - 06:18 AM.
5
Also I didn't have to rely on that jump-jet crutch (because everything is a crutch these days) 
Cion, on 02 February 2016 - 02:07 PM, said:
