Bush Hopper, on 13 June 2018 - 11:57 PM, said:
70+ Alphas seen from the perspective of light and medium mechs
I think most people here see the alpha situation of heavy and assault mechs.
Let's see it from the perspective of light and medium mechs for a second which are for a reasons the underdogs numberwise.
An alpha of 70+ is enough to take out a ST or even CT of a light mech. This also hold true for some mediums. Sure, you can roll damage but you are not always in a 1 vs 1 situation and let's be honest you can also be caught with your pants down. It may be fun for a heavy or assault mech to cripple or outright destroy a low weight mech but I can assure you, it isn't for the pilot of the light or medium.Heck, ever got taken out by a dual heavy gauss in a light? It is no fun.
that's the risk you take when you're not fully paying attention to your surroundings, and one that can be mitigated through more cautious and observant gameplay. yes, it can be frustrating to get one-shot in a light, but if you're playing intelligently it shouldn't be very common.
Bush Hopper, on 13 June 2018 - 11:57 PM, said:
Therefore I am for changing the "high alpha meta" we have now more to a kind of "DPS meta". For example that the damage output of alphas is around 30 points of damage (maybe higher for "scatter" weapons like LBX and LRMS SRMS etc).
i hope you enjoy a very homogenized and even more stagnant meta, because that's what you'd end up with.
Bush Hopper, on 13 June 2018 - 11:57 PM, said:
Of course, some of the heavy and assault jocks will now yell bloody murder, however, there are quite some advantages:
1. Facetime is suddenly available / Lights and meds get more playable
This means that a light and medium mech can suddenly act more freely like drive-by-shooting or even try a brawl simply because they do not need to fear that one well-placed alpha cripples them.
they can already do this, you just need to have some situational awareness and know how to approach larger threats.
Bush Hopper, on 13 June 2018 - 11:57 PM, said:
2. Diversity in playstyle
More facetime means that finally there can be other playstyles than peek-a-booing and alphaing like mad. Even brawling may become a thing once more or lead charges into an enemy line simply because the alphas of 2 mechs won't blast you to kingdome come
brawling was alive and well before they made the brilliant decision to nerf every single brawling weapon and make most of the mechs handle like junk.
Bush Hopper, on 13 June 2018 - 11:57 PM, said:
3. Diversity of loadouts
Currently boating trumps everything. However, when you can fire only e.g. 30 point alpha it also gets attractive to mix weapons more because you can "stagger" your volleys. So you may want a long-range weapon to soften up the enemy and backup weaponry as well.
that's not entirely true. having synergistic weapons is the important thing. whether you achieve that through boating (which is only possible to a certain extent due to ghost heat) or complementary weapon systems is up to you. forcing a strict damage cap only serves to eliminate more defined roles and penalize mechs with certain hardpoint configurations.
Bush Hopper, on 13 June 2018 - 11:57 PM, said:
4. Movememt vs Firepower & Armour
Finally you can re-position and moving properly (not just running from cover to cover) gets more important. Like dogfights in WW2 planes. At the moment while agility is important to some degree it gets easily trumped by firepower and armour to generate and absorb such huge alphas. This again would support speedier mechs like lights and mediums and make them more relevant
you know what else would make lights and mediums more relevant? un-nerfing their agility and limited selection of weapons.
Bush Hopper, on 13 June 2018 - 11:57 PM, said:
And there are even more advantages.
Now, what drawback has it? You cannot one-shot people anymore. Is it so bad to have no Call of Duty with mech skins?
it has major drawbacks. it greatly diminishes the dynamic of DPS vs. alpha, and it becomes ridiculously restrictive the more you go up in tonnage. the call of duty comparison doesn't make a lot of sense considering one shot kills have always been present in both battletech as well as previous mechwarrior titles. mechwarrior online has a far higher TTK on average than probably any other game i've played. it can vary pretty wildly since you have all sorts of mechs of differing weights and weapon payloads running around the battlefield, but to me that's part of what makes the game interesting.