The6thMessenger, on 05 July 2019 - 04:54 PM, said:
Rework. Tweak.
Buffed is simply making it powerful. What I want is to make it function differently, such as when IS seems to be rather defensive, it becomes more offensive -- as in for light-hunting. Because it wouldn't have any place in the game otherwise.
The two are not mutually exclusive, if a rework makes something stronger it is a buff. This would make streaks stronger therefor it is a buff.
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Here's a thought, there's ECM and AMS versus missiles, which makes it harder for Streaks, LRMs, and ATMs. Where is your outrage for those?
ECM also has narc, tag, and PPCs that can counter it, all of which require player skill to be used effectively. Play and counter play. AMS is an interesting case, a single AMS doesn't stop missiles so much as mitigate some of the damage. A whole team using them can certainly shut down an LRM boat, however similarly a whole team running streaks can shut down lights. If 1 AMS mech can shut down 1 or more missile boats by itself and still contribute to the team it might be an issue. The mechs that can do this are pretty limited though.
Lock on weapons in general are easier to use. Low effort weapons have low effort counters. I think lock on weapons generally make the game less interesting and less fun, I would personally enjoy the game more if they didn't exist, since spending half of a match hanging out behind cover while I wait for the missile lock to die isn't engaging gameplay. That said, I know that other people like to play them so I don't advocate for having them removed.
If I run into the open and someone hits me with a PPC I can respect their aim, and perhaps with better piloting could have dodged it. If I run across the open and I get smashed by missiles, I know that they did minimal work to get the hit, and that no amount of evasion would dodge the impact. One challenges me to improve my skills, the other encourages me to camp behind cover.
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It's not fun for the Assault, hell it's not fun for the slow-*** clan-heavy to be circle-strafed by some light or fast-medium. But fact is, there's plays and counter plays. There are those DESIGNED to counter something, and it just happens lights counters the slow-*** assaults.
It's a game of counters.
I'm fine with counters. Twin heavy gauss is the best anti-light weapon in the game if the pilot can aim. In the case of that though it requires one pilot to aim and allows one pilot to try and evade. It's a contest of skill. Streaks attempt to provide parity by making it easy to kill a light, regardless of the relative skill difference. A weak player in a streak mech can often kill a strong player in a light mech despite the skill gap between them being high. In contrast, a weak player in a light mech will almost certainly get destroyed by a strong player in an assault mech.
It's a common view that light mechs counter assaults, and to a point they do, however a strong assault mech pilot can just as easily kill a light mech or multiple light mechs. A good light can easily kill a bad assault, a good assault can easily kill a bad light. A good light is still going to struggle against a bad streak mech unless they have a loadout that counters it or the streak mech is really bad.
I'm against weapons that reduce or remove the role of skill in the game. Yes, using terrain to avoid streaks is a skill, but there are limits to what it can do and the balance is heavily skewed towards streaks.
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Don't get me wrong, I don't harbor ire for lights, hell I play Urbie as main. But lets just take a step back and consider what would happen if SSRMs isn't a light-hunter -- then it barely has any place in the game. It's just a more-spread version of the SRMs that would basically par better if you could hit it better.
It becomes a fallback weapon for players that can't aim, which is mostly what it is now. Having a weapon that hard counters lights isn't a good role, given that lights are already countered by a lot of other things.
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Unless you make lights easier to hit by default so that Assaults have better chance at defending themselves against the dreadfully annoying lights, i think you should be thankful that it's at least just one class of weapons that are designed to counter lights, instead of the mess like that of the HBS Battletech.
Here we run into the core of the issue. A lot of lights were already made significantly easier to hit by the rescale (Jenner/Firestarter in particular). Why? Because people were too bad of shots to be able to hit them. The reason assaults can't defend themselves is not because they aren't capable (most of them are), but because the pilots are just too bad to hit a fast moving target. It takes skill to weave and avoid fire, it takes skill to hit a fast moving light. That's a good thing. Adding a weapon system to make of for lack of skill and to counter other players' skill is a bad thing.
There are edge cases, like a Commando leg hugging an Atlas, while it can somewhat be countered by arm weapons, it's not great game design (though I do like penalizing torso only weapons somewhat).
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Well, there's also the reason that it hits farther. Remember when it now has a weighted chance to hit the torso? Now versus SRMs that could be focused at 200m and never anything above 270m before quirks, you got SSRMs that could hit farther that is better for hit-and-run tactics with fire-and-forget missiles. Streak-SCat is particularly powerful with this due to constant SSRM poptarting.
I'm well aware of the uses streaks had in the past. I've run streaknado builds in comp matches where the whole point was to be faster and use the range to kite a brawl deck. That doesn't change the fact that making streaks better as they are now will hurt light mechs. Also, making IS and Clan streaks clones of each other isn't an ideal solution either.
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What if I told you that when I'm playing Dire, lights actively make the game harder to me? Like I said before, it's a game of counters. What you want is precisely is having your cake and eat it too.
You misunderstand me, I'm not opposed to things that make the game harder for me. Again, twin heavy gauss makes my life much harder, but it makes the game more interesting because it's skill vs skill. Streaks aren't. Streaks are a boring weapon system to use and an annoying weapon system to play against. There effectiveness quickly caps out with a minimal amount of skill. I don't think the effectiveness against lights warrants the small amount of skill required to use them.
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I never said anything about boating.
No you didn't, but the logical effect of improving a weapon is that boating it will become stronger. What clan mechs do you see taking streaks most frequently? Maddog, Huntsman, Stormcrow, Arcticwolf. Usually boating.
My biggest complaint against streaks is that they are very strong against lights while requiring very little skill to use. Allowing almost any player to counter almost any light. In general, I think a more skilled player should have a decent chance to beat a less skilled player, and streaks remove the role of a lot of skills that making piloting lights what it is (e.g. being able to dodge and evade). The point of the class is to be harder to hit, and streaks take this away. I think that's overall bad for the game.
If lights were the top scoring class I would be all for making counters against them stronger. Right now though, heavier mechs consistently outscore lights, I don't think that making an easy counter better is a good thing.
Anyway, I've spent enough time arguing a moot point. There are significantly bigger issues in the game than this one and it's a rather pointless argument to have as I'm pretty confident PGI is not going to implement it anyway.
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