Sidefire, on 26 January 2017 - 10:25 PM, said:
But what I'm trying to argue is that they have their place in the game as a useful weapons system and that we should at least consider fostering that idea. New players gravitate towards LRMs. They look like one of the best weapons systems on paper, so they load up tons of them and then wonder why they're so useless as the only weapon on their mech. Instead of slapping them and shoving a metamechs.com build into their faces, we show them how to actually work LRM mechs so they can be a boon to their team instead of a complete waste of room.
Here's the problem with running LRMs vs running meta builds. Initially a new player might do better with LRMs than direct fire weapons due to poor aim, positioning, etc.. This leads these players into thinking that LRMs are better than direct fire weapons and other people just don't know how to use them correctly. The inflated damage from the LRM spread further adds to this.
While LRMs work pretty well in low tier QP and to some extent T1 QP they become less effective the better the team you are playing against gets. Taking LRMs into the T1 GQ or FP against a half decent team is a recipe for getting stomped on. A player that uses direct fire weapons is learning and improving the skills needed to compete at a higher level. The player that is using LRMs is going to reach a point where they find they are no longer effective, but they won't be able to switch to direct fire/meta easily because they've been relying on LRM builds to get where they are.
Amsro, on 27 January 2017 - 01:17 AM, said:
Another fallacy, they ONLY work because your enemy sucks.
It's not a fallacy if it's accurate though. A competent player with the right equipment on most maps can avoid 90% of incoming LRMs. If you're consistently hitting lights with LRMs and doing significant damage it's because those lights are not using cover properly. There's no reason a light can't avoid almost all of the LRMs on most maps if they are being careful. Same for jump snipers and most ranged builds. It's a bit harder for brawlers, but most maps have enough cover to avoid most incoming fire. You know what loadout scares me in a light? A Gauss + PPC buid. You know what build doesn't scare me a LRM boat. One can kill me in 1-2 shots. The other is mostly just a nuisance if I watch my positioning. I'm far from the best player and if I can do it other players can too (this isn't just limited to lights either).
Sidefire, on 27 January 2017 - 05:34 AM, said:
Just to appease the folk who keep saying I've only done one match, here's another screenshot from my first game today. Sure it's not as good as the first match, but it's not a pretty decent run nonetheless.
The point isn't that you only had one good match. I can pull up a bunch of solid matches for mechs that are considered bad like the Myst Lynx or the Urban mech. I don't care how many great matches you have what I care about is what your average performance looks like. If you play 100 matches you can easily pull the top 10 games and make it look significantly better. On the flip side if you pull your worst 10 matches you can make it look like LRMs are terrible. The point is that it's anecdotal and confirmation bias. If you think LRMs are decent you're only going to look to screenshot games you do well in. To get an accurate picture we need all the games over a decent spread, not a cherrypicked few.
El Bandito, on 27 January 2017 - 05:35 AM, said:
When most people are talking about LRMs they aren't saying you can't have good matches with them. You absolutely can. The issue is that they perform poorer as a whole than meta builds will. If the enemy team is in the tunnel on crimson your LRM mech has basically been rendered useless. QP meta is meta because they are mechs that are most likely to consistently perform well across all maps/matches. Laser vomit is more meta in QP than brawl because it can be effective on brawl maps and range maps like Alpine.
Maybe 20% of the maps are "good" for LRMs, say 60% for brawlers, and 90% for ranged builds. Given you don't know what map you're going to hit, which type is going to give you the best results? In FP for example good teams will switch decks based on the map (usually just hot/cold/extra range choices). LRMs are feast or famine. They can do really well given the right circumstances, but they can be rendered nearly useless by others (good cover, ECM, etc.). From experience, having more LRMs on your team is going to make you more likely to lose the match.
The issue is not possibility, but probability and LRMs on your team is probably a bad thing hence the dislike.
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