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I consider myself as a dedicated light mech player. Not the best but still slightly above average. Before I quit the game for couple months (it was before the re-scaling) I had almost 4 000 matches played. Out of those some 1 900 were in lights. And out of those 1 900 almost 900 were in Commandos. My second most used mechs are Pirates Bane and Raven 3L. All together I have some 1 500 games played in either Commando, Locust or Raven.
I've read all those 17 pages of light re-scale discussion. I understand the whole scream of dying lights on one hand. On the other hand I see no difference since my favored mech were not affected by these changes. They were "big" enough before and they are the same right now. I always had to adjust my tactics to the fact I do not sit in the meta. I could play well (for my own feeling) in the past and I can play well now. My second game with Command 1D when I had returned resulted in 4 kills, 4 assists, 2 kill most damage, 460 damage and 250 k C-Bills. It was not a typical game but nothing I could achieve rarely.
Now my two cents to light mech population problem. As few mentioned here the main problem of the game from lights point of view is that the game is strictly damage oriented. The secondary problems are that all maps are too small for any kind of distraction or light "indirect" fight and the constant number of player on both teams.
Regarding the damage. You do no damage -> you get nothing. There are few actions that are not tied together with damage you deal but they are not worth to do:
1) Scouting. You get 3 K for each mech you targeted first. This has usually no effect for your team because only target mechs are visible for rest of the team. So you either earn some money by fast clicking on R key which on the other hand gives your team almost zero advantage or stay focus on one enemy allows your team aimed LRMs and see it on map but you get basically no rewards.
2) Capping the base. But though you win the match for your team for low reward you will be probably hated by the rest of your teammates because they are all damage oriented and they get even less than you.
3) NARCing. You are limited by your team (there shall be any lrm boat and he shall be skilled enough to not fire on any other targets visible for 2 seconds while ignoring the big fat NARCed sitting duck - it's way more common than you would expect). Once again the revenue is too small.
4) Tagging. That the most stupid reward in the game. There is NO reward for tagging except when you break through ECM or get the tag kill. So you sit in the open LOS with your enemy, pointing a bright finger visible for everyone to one enemy and waiting. In 90 per cent cases the one who is tagging would be dead before there would be any damage to tagged target.
5) UAV. Usually it's not worth. You spent way more C-Bills for this consumable than you can earn in 99 per cent. Giving the lights (at least those orienting for gathering intel) the quirk for free use of one UAV would be interesting feature.
I try to use my Commandos, Raven and Locusts as supporters for my team as much as I can. Hell from time to time I even mount tag lasers on one of my Commando. My Raven 3L is packed with tag laser and NARC beams as highly oriented supporter but I got nothing for the job. Yesterday I player FP scouting missions. We won three out of four gathering intel missions because I was in light mech and was the only one who get to the extraction zone. I did nothing except I gathered 75 per cent of intel we got and returned to zone just in time. Thus we won these missions but guess what? I got no LPs because they are all tied up with causing damage to your enemies. Luckily, though I was in pug groups all the time the other guys understood the victory conditions so were not yelling at me not participating in brawling. Without each other we would lost. But I got nothing for my part of the job.
So what's conclusion? Until the game would be so heavily damage dealing oriented, there would be gross of lights focusing on direct damage than doing anything else. And that's the reason why the heavies are so populated because they have the mobility of mediums with damage dealing ability of some assaults. Get people rewarded for auxiliary/support tasks and you'll see less whining about lights from all directions.
For the secondary issues. Introducing of big maps with randomly generated objective locations would help a lot. And I don't mean the Alpine peak when I speak about the big map. Maps where you can get from one side to another in 60 seconds in mechs running 100 km/h are tiny.
Edited by Pragr, 14 September 2016 - 12:29 AM.
