Agent of Change, on 15 July 2018 - 02:20 PM, said:
Sadly I can't fully disagree with you here, Light is an overstatement. I think "VERY light to passing resemblance" might be a better classification. But it is more than a bog standard twitch fps so it at least deserves to be acknowledged as such, especially the since in addition to the things you mentioned you ALSO have hit locations, ablating armor, and progressive damage.
The lore also deserves to be mentioned and at least approached with some respect. Translation shouldn't ever be 1 to 1 because quite frankly a TT system will not transition directly to a FPS sim gracefully. Time scale alone kinda torpedoes that, but an entire category of weapons systems from the setting deserves a place in an Battletech based game even if that game is a hollow shell of what it should be and is more like an arena death match than anything else.
PGI reduced the impact mechanical skill has significantly, but I wouldn't say that makes MWO "more" than a twitch shooter. It's different, yes, and I know people around here like to pat themselves on the back by fully buying into the whole "thinking man's shooter" slogan, but shooters like ARMA are both twitchier and vastly more complex in practice than MWO. Any way, MWO is so far removed from BattleTech that I don't buy into the argument that LRM's are an integral part to the simulation aspect and, thus, can't be reworked to improve the gameplay experience.
Agent of Change, on 15 July 2018 - 02:20 PM, said:
No argument, that it's status as a sim has little bearing on whether or not LRM's are beneficial to teh game. But that determination is very much a matter of opinion. Right now LRMS represent Indirect fire with a requirement of active locks with both an environmental soft counter AND a technological soft counter (AMS). I'm not sure what else they can do. I've seen LRM's at their absolutely worst and these days they are just fine. Not overwhelming, counterable. It's never fun being under the rain... but then it's also equally not fun getting cored out in 3 seconds by laser vomit and dual guass, and DHGR.
My issue is primarily their design, not their effectiveness; I'll get to that at a later paragraph.
Agent of Change, on 15 July 2018 - 02:20 PM, said:
I can't speak to long tom that came and went during my hiatus, but Consumable were a large reason i left years ago... in their current state i'm not mad. but that's not the point. The point is we all have things we like or don't and there is always the choice to adapt to it, or not.
My point is, something being in the game doesn't mean it belongs there or is beneficial to the game. "It's part of the game" is the biggest non-argument regarding whether something is fine or not there is.
Agent of Change, on 15 July 2018 - 02:20 PM, said:
The problem is while you seem to have a pretty clear, and reasonable complaint, the issue is not with the weapon system but with the players using it badly.
Not really. As I said, the issue is the design of the weapon.
See, the players that sit way back and try to not expose themselves are using the weapon right, from a strictly logical point of view. A long range weapon that allows you to avoid return fire because exposure is unnecessary is, logically, best used in that exact way: By positioning yourself in a way that eliminates the possibility of return fire. This kinda ties in with how MWO fails to be a BT simulation because you wouldn't have your long range fire support Mechs up front tanking.
That, however, is contrary to the necessity of sharing armour and spreading damage as evenly as possible between your team mates in MWO. The LRM's design isn't consistent with MWO's gameplay, which is what prompts the issue with players using them "badly".
Agent of Change, on 15 July 2018 - 02:20 PM, said:
Many peoples sole problem with it is the assumption that it's an easy mode weapon for bad players which is just arrogant and stupid.
I agree with you, if you roll LRMS you need to move with your team, you need to position for maximum effect, to provide the best flight path for your missile to be effective and not get caught out alone.
Well, you need to manage your Mech just like you do with other weapons (e.g. manage armour, heat and ammo), you need to position yourself (which is arguably more lenient with LRMs since you don't need to actually clear terrain), but homing weapons completely remove aiming from the equation; so, yeah, a weapon system that requires skills A, B and C is more demanding than a weapon system that requires skills A and B.
So yeah, can't say that the whole "low skill" thing is unfounded. Anecdotal evidence: When drunk, my performance with direct fire weapons drops significantly, while my LRM performance is usually pretty much unaffected (in some cases, it even went up because I stopped overthinking). This issue is compounded by the fact that there are so many factors influencing overall performance of a per match basis - who's getting thrown onto which team, first and foremost - that a lower pay-off due to lower skill requirements is at least not observable.
But again, the issue is that the design of the weapon contradicts the gameplay of our deathmatches which turns the weapon system into a huge source of frustration for me.
Agent of Change, on 15 July 2018 - 02:20 PM, said:
In the end the biggest issue i have with MWO stems from the choice to lean into FPS over Sim.
Not being more sim heavy is, in and off itself, not a bad thing. Plenty of games that are in no way sims are amazing, it's just that MWO, from my point of view, is not consistent in its game design. If PGI fully committed to making it a good, consistent, deathmatch experience and set the game up accordingly, it'd be a much more enjoyable experience while probably being no further removed from BattleTech than MWO is
Agent of Change, on 15 July 2018 - 02:20 PM, said:
Sadly sven reasonable complaints about weapons systems (and the people that use them) are going to get lumped into the toxic idiocy coming from the loudest voices screaming about "lrmtards" and low skill... which are largely just covering a sense of bizarre outrage that anythign could kill them in game.
To be fair, MWO's community isn't overly toxic, from my experience. The average MWO player is just exceedingly bad at the game and the overall skill level is extremely low for a competitive game, which leads to that sorta stuff.
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