19 replies to this topic

[Black Fish]

Think about it - Light chassis needed a change, something to differentiate them from the rest of the classes, like info warfare and such. With the re-scale taking away the light 'Mechs' obvious advantage - which is being much smaller than their size per tonnage, other advantages can now be applied like increased agility, speed and unique quirks that are not just about hit and get-hit.
Right now it's clear to be an overall nerf, but in the long-run, it can be a platform for diversity.

My 2 cents

[Kaeb Odellas]

Black Fish, on 24 June 2016 - 12:11 AM, said:

Think about it - Light chassis needed a change, something to differentiate them from the rest of the classes, like info warfare and such. With the re-scale taking away the light 'Mechs' obvious advantage - which is being much smaller than their size per tonnage, other advantages can now be applied like increased agility, speed and unique quirks that are not just about hit and get-hit.
Right now it's clear to be an overall nerf, but in the long-run, it can be a platform for diversity.

My 2 cents

Yeah well I'm not looking forward to most lights being useless for the next 6 months while PGI decides what to do with them.

[Black Fish]

Kaeb Odellas, on 24 June 2016 - 12:21 AM, said:

Yeah well I'm not looking forward to most lights being useless for the next 6 months while PGI decides what to do with them.

Weren't most of them useless already?

[Lykaon]

Black Fish, on 24 June 2016 - 12:11 AM, said:

Think about it - Light chassis needed a change, something to differentiate them from the rest of the classes, like info warfare and such. With the re-scale taking away the light 'Mechs' obvious advantage - which is being much smaller than their size per tonnage, other advantages can now be applied like increased agility, speed and unique quirks that are not just about hit and get-hit.
Right now it's clear to be an overall nerf, but in the long-run, it can be a platform for diversity.

My 2 cents

Except we are playing the game we have and not the game we wish we had.


Overall I am still on the fence on this rescale issue when it comes to the light mechs in particular the 35 ton mechs.

Here is the thing to think over.

Jenner and Catapult compareson.

35 ton mech being around 80% the size of the 65 ton mech seems off when you think about these things.

The 35 ton mech has one third the weapon payload

The 35 ton mech has about half the combined armor and structure of the 65 ton mech

The 35 ton mech is about double the speed of the 65 ton mech

The light mech is built around evasion as defense instead of absorption (soaking damage with armor and structure). The heavier mechs due to lower speeds are easier to hit but are the light mechs twice as hard to hit as the heavy? And is only twice as hard to hit enough when the decreased volume of damage is accounted for in the equation? (remember the lights pack about one third the payload of the heavy)

It's still to soon for me to have a well rounded opinion on these changes.

[adamts01]

I'm with the guys above. I'd really like there to be more to this game, but there just isn't, and probably never will be. I ran out of coffee and had 2 bad Locust matches in a row, switched to my Stormcrow for a bit and didn't see a single light for two matches. They're in a very bleak place, most anyhow.

[VorpalAnvil]

Rescale just made a bunch of good mechs useless, far more than it made viable. And that's not even including the quirks that were removed/lowered on mechs that really needed them. As a previous poster said, I don't have the patience to wait 6 months for PGI to get done sitting on their hands and maybe if we are lucky do something to improve lights. We just had what was probably the most diverse period in this games history as far a viable mechs and weapons systems. **** just got really stale. GGCLOTHES PGI.

[Marmon Rzohr]

Lykaon, on 24 June 2016 - 02:03 AM, said:

Except we are playing the game we have and not the game we wish we had.

This needs to be on top of a lot of forum threads

Yeah the light mech nerf was not a needed thing. They were hardly too powerful. Talking about Info Warfare which is not even in a theoretical stage is really, really silly.

[Lily from animove]

Lykaon, on 24 June 2016 - 02:03 AM, said:

Except we are playing the game we have and not the game we wish we had.


Overall I am still on the fence on this rescale issue when it comes to the light mechs in particular the 35 ton mechs.

Here is the thing to think over.

Jenner and Catapult compareson.

35 ton mech being around 80% the size of the 65 ton mech seems off when you think about these things.

The 35 ton mech has one third the weapon payload

The 35 ton mech has about half the combined armor and structure of the 65 ton mech

The 35 ton mech is about double the speed of the 65 ton mech

The light mech is built around evasion as defense instead of absorption (soaking damage with armor and structure). The heavier mechs due to lower speeds are easier to hit but are the light mechs twice as hard to hit as the heavy? And is only twice as hard to hit enough when the decreased volume of damage is accounted for in the equation? (remember the lights pack about one third the payload of the heavy)

It's still to soon for me to have a well rounded opinion on these changes.

with size you mean "tall" and totally ignored the other 2 dimensions

[Alistair Winter]

I actually agree with the OP. However, I don't think that the solution is "Now we just have to make the light mechs proper scouts. #rolewarfare". Because not all light mechs should be scouts, any more than all medium mechs should be brawlers or all heavy mechs should be support mechs.

The good thing about the re-scale is that illustrates just how absurd the power balance between weightclasses in MWO really is. Like me and Deathlike were talking about in another thread, there used to be a bunch of viable IS light mechs, but now there's basically 2 viable IS light mechs and 7 bad ones. This, to me, doesn't illustrate that light mechs need more infotech or better quirks. It shows that the light mech class as a whole needs help.

There's 2 ways to help light mechs:

• Power creep. Give them moar hardpoints, moar weapon quirks, moar structure quirks, moar mobility quirks, moar everything. I don't like this idea. We have enough power creep.
  
• Global nerf to medium, heavy and assault mechs.

The one advantage all light mechs are supposed to have over bigger mechs isn't scouting. It's agility and mobility. PGI needs to nerf the agility and mobility of mediums, heavies and assault mechs. Especially those with big engines, because big engines in MWO are quite frankly OP and no one wants to talk about it. What's the flipping point in equipping an STD230 engine on a heavy mech if you can equip an XL300 instead? I do think big engines should give the same speed, but I don't think they should give the same advantages to torso twist and turn rate, for example.


PGI needs to change:

• What kind of turn rate, torso twist and arm movement bigger mechs have. Some mechs need both the range (i.e. degrees) and the speed reduced.
  
• How big engines impact agility. Everyone's going for speed over survivability, because putting an XL325 in your heavy mech basically makes it walk on water and dance over tree tops.

The answer is not to let all light mechs accelerate to from 0 to lightspeed in a split second, like the Locust. The answer is to nerf the most powerful mechs in MWO, especially the mechs that consistently make up ~40% of the queue. The heavy mechs.


However, in this particular case, I blame the players just as much as I blame PGI. Because most of the players are fine with light mechs being useless. It lets them beat their chest and live out their childhood fantasies about piloting the invincible Timber Wolf.

Edited by Alistair Winter, 24 June 2016 - 04:16 AM.

[Jables McBarty]

Alistair Winter, on 24 June 2016 - 04:03 AM, said:

Because most of the players are fine with light mechs being useless. It lets them beat their chest and live out their childhood fantasies about piloting the invincible Timber Wolf.

And anytime a light does get the jump on an assault, the forum is flooded with fatty tears.

[DrxAbstract]

Alistair Winter, on 24 June 2016 - 04:03 AM, said:

I actually agree with the OP. However, I don't think that the solution is "Now we just have to make the light mechs proper scouts. #rolewarfare". Because not all light mechs should be scouts, any more than all medium mechs should be brawlers or all heavy mechs should be support mechs.

The good thing about the re-scale is that illustrates just how absurd the power balance between weightclasses in MWO really is. Like me and Deathlike were talking about in another thread, there used to be a bunch of viable IS light mechs, but now there's basically 2 viable IS light mechs and 7 bad ones. This, to me, doesn't illustrate that light mechs need more infotech or better quirks. It shows that the light mech class as a whole needs help.

There's 2 ways to help light mechs:

• Power creep. Give them moar hardpoints, moar weapon quirks, moar structure quirks, moar mobility quirks, moar everything. I don't like this idea. We have enough power creep.
  
• Global nerf to medium, heavy and assault mechs.

The one advantage all light mechs are supposed to have over bigger mechs isn't scouting. It's agility and mobility. PGI needs to nerf the agility and mobility of mediums, heavies and assault mechs. Especially those with big engines, because big engines in MWO are quite frankly OP and no one wants to talk about it. What's the flipping point in equipping an STD230 engine on a heavy mech if you can equip an XL300 instead? I do think big engines should give the same speed, but I don't think they should give the same advantages to torso twist and turn rate, for example.


PGI needs to change:

• What kind of turn rate, torso twist and arm movement bigger mechs have. Some mechs need both the range (i.e. degrees) and the speed reduced.
  
• How big engines impact agility. Everyone's going for speed over survivability, because putting an XL325 in your heavy mech basically makes it walk on water and dance over tree tops.

The answer is not to let all light mechs accelerate to from 0 to lightspeed in a split second, like the Locust. The answer is to nerf the most powerful mechs in MWO, especially the mechs that consistently make up ~40% of the queue. The heavy mechs.


However, in this particular case, I blame the players just as much as I blame MWO. Because most of the players are fine with light mechs being useless. It lets them beat their chest and live out their childhood fantasies about piloting the invincible Timber Wolf.

Or you could mix the two options and give certain Lights more hardpoints, remove the stupid 10 required heat sinks and a fresh round of moderate agility quirks while keeping the weapon and survival quirks to a minimum... At the same time nerfing the other 3 classes, especially Heavies. Unfortunately it's a mess that requires a toothbrush rather than a shop broom to clean up.

[Rhaythe]

Light mechs have always been 'hard mode' in this game. They're at a very ugly intersection of Player-Unwanted and PGI-Forgotten. There's a reason the player queue hovers around 8 percent nightly.

Personally, I took one look at the Jenner and Firestarter and thought, "you've gotta be kidding me", before I just flipped to my Cicada. The Locust made off like a bandit. Everything else, on the other hand, I have to wonder.

I still love my lights, but for such a low population percentage, they didn't do lights any favors. Not that they ever have.

[feeWAIVER]

Light Mechs are fine.

[GreyNovember]

I imagine it's also even better for the guys shooting at us.

Like that small light that weighs 65 tons that walked by me.

[AnTi90d]

Did PGI rescale them only based on volume? It looks, to me, like volume.. I could visually see three Firestarters turned into clay and smashed together to make up an Atlas.

I think it would have been better to "put a lead sinker" into the clay of each mech. Like, say the cockpit is 10 tons for every mech but takes up no space, thus the Atlas would be 90 tons of volume and the FS9 25 tons of volume. This is a system a lot like grading tests on a curve.

The ratio of light size to assault size would then be greater, thus we'd have smaller mechs. With the current method, its 126 FS to 360 AS and with a weighted sinker in them they would be 100 FS to 360 AS (Simplified figures based on the lowest common denominator of their ratios.) So, Firestarters would be about 7% smaller with a sinker weight.

The sinker weight representing common and required mech internals could be adjusted to other weight values, heavier weights meaning smaller lights and less heavy or no weights meaning larger lights.

[Ultimax]

I'd like to quote an excellent fellow forum warrior, from a recently created thread where he contributed a truly concise & apt comment for the idea that was put forward:

TercieI, on 24 June 2016 - 04:48 AM, said:

Lol.

Edited by Ultimax, 24 June 2016 - 05:12 AM.

[TercieI]

Ultimax, on 24 June 2016 - 05:12 AM, said:

I'd like to quote an excellent fellow forum warrior, from a recently created thread where he contributed a truly concise & apt comment for the idea that was put forward:

I was trying to come up with the correct response to this thread, but you're right. I already had. Lol. Again.

[Mole]

I haven't played with my lights yet since the rescale because I've been leveling my Atlas, so I don't really know how they are. However, I will say that while playing my Atlas the other night I ended a Firestarter by hitting him twice in a row with my hip mounted AC/20. Not sure whether he was just a bad pilot, I got lucky, the rescale was to blame, or all of the above. Either way, it made me happy that I killed him like that in my Atlas but also made me cringe at the thought that it might really just be that easy to peg a light 'mech now.

[Clownwarlord]

I agree with the OP. It allows for the game to progress in a positive way. "A little pain today for a lifetime of glory." Also I am an assault pilot, so suck it up butter-cup!

[Foxwalker]

Yes, Light mechs were OP. That is why the average light mech queues are almost always below 18%.
If they were so great, wouldn't think you would see greater numbers of players ah, playing them?

A few of them are in the higher tiers, but most are just awful. Panthers bigger?, give me a break.
I thought the whole point of the rescale was to evaluate some that were too large for their class, like Trebs, for example and make them a bit smaller.

I think this scale thing is an example of be careful what you wish for. The Genie, just put a sausage on your nose.