Asym, on 19 April 2019 - 04:28 AM, said:
And yes, some of the energy and ballistic weapons were "slightly" nerf'd..... Missiles were hard nerf'd and ot changed how they function on more than one occasion! So, you aren't wrong at all........it's just that the least effective weapon seems to bear the brunt of a lot of angst because players are just too lazy to mount the hard counters and then complain missiles are OP.....
Small pulse lasers were nerfed extremely hard, when was the last time you saw a significant amount of CSPLs in a match? Guess which weight class primarily uses short range light weight weapons? In fact many of the weapons that light mechs use have been nerfed over the years, primarily because A ) they were boated by heavier mechs and/or B ) there were complaints of light mechs being too strong.
Gauss rifles have had multiple significant balance changes including a mechanic change (charge up) and being linked to PPCs for ghost heat (cross ghost heat if you will). They've also had extreme cooldown nerfs in the past.
Flamers have had their mechanics changed significantly in the past.
Lasers have been tweaked for cooldown, duration, and damage. Effectively, all the mechanics that you can really tweak for the weapon system as it stands.
ECM received multiple significant nerfs, primarily due to the issues it being too strong against lock on weapons.
To say that direct fire weapons haven't been nerfed or changed significantly is simply untrue. The reason that LRMs have had the most changes to their mechanics is simply because they have the most complex mechanics (from a programming side) so there is more room to tune them. Lock time, trajectory, direct/indirect fire only apply to LRMs so of course they are going to be tuned to try and impact balance.
You're also conveniently forgetting the many times that LRMs have been buffed and how they've been nerfed in response to the buffs making them too strong for one reason or another. The reason that LRMs have been balanced so much is that a lock on indirect fire weapon is inherently difficult to balance. It's easy to use so any attempt to make it comparable in strength to direct fire weapons has a strong chance of making it the go to weapon. It also means that it will inherently be better at lower skill levels such that buffing them to be good at higher levels will tend to make them overly strong at low skill levels.
A lot of the complaints against LRMs come from the fact that they reduce player agency and generally just make matches less fun for a lot of players. Neither shooting nor dodging LRMs is an action that many players enjoy. Putting 2 tons on a mech as a counter is hardly engaging gameplay. If everyone did it the LRM crowd would just complain until it got nerfed.