26 replies to this topic

[Wildstreak]

Has no effect on weight class choices, Heavies still most preferred.

[JediPanther]

Not surprising when you can name all the viable lights with one hand. Maybe make the rest of lights not suck then try and sale them? I'm betting that the new impending re-RE-scale will help kill them off even more.

[FupDup]

JediPanther, on 29 March 2021 - 04:50 PM, said:

Not surprising when you can name all the viable lights with one hand. Maybe make the rest of lights not suck then try and sale them? I'm betting that the new impending re-RE-scale will help kill them off even more.

More variety in chassis would help, but I think there is always going to be some level of reduced popularity of lights because of a few reasons:

1. The giant stompy robot power fantasy is more thoroughly satisfied by giant plodding weapon platforms more than sneaky subtle backstabbers.

2. An older playerbase with slower reaction times (lights, at least the fast ones, require faster decision making and reflexes than big mechs to not get splattered).

3. The lore of the series tends to always glamorize the big mechs and portray them as something only the "elite" get to have access to and a rite of passage. Meanwhile the smaller mechs are portrayed as crash test dummies and fodder. There are way more famous characters and hero variants of the big mechs than the small mechs. Just look at how many freaking canon heroes the Dire Wolf has.

Edited by FupDup, 29 March 2021 - 04:58 PM.

[Shatterpoint]

Until it's worth using a light over pretty much any other class the sale is just a chance to add some mechs for possible future use, not for current use.

Getting 1shot by the army of current sniper builds sucks.
Always losing PSR despite getting kills/scouting/being useful sucks.
Being stuck with the few mechs that can use stealth armor sucks.

[ScrapIron Prime]

FupDup, on 29 March 2021 - 04:54 PM, said:

2. An older playerbase with slower reaction times (lights, at least the fast ones, require faster decision making and reflexes than big mechs to not get splattered).

Them's fightin' words, kid. Now get off my lawn.

[Vlad Ward]

Lights currently derive a decent chunk of their viability from their ability to facehug much taller mechs without consequence, which is of course completely unintended and only possible because knockdowns were turned off in Beta.

BT lore has a lot of linear progression built in. Lights are cheaper and weaker than heavier Mechs. Period. That just doesn't work in MWO where every player should have an important role.

The natural niche for Light Mechs is in map/objective-control and providing a soft counter to Assaults.

Therefore, the obvious solution is to add Respawns to QP, remove the Kill victory condition from all modes except Skirmish, and give Lights the Long Tom.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 29 March 2021 - 05:35 PM.

[PocketYoda]

Lights best work in packs so if you play solo you most likely aren't.. Players also tend to not work well in groups with randoms. There are so many poor light mechs that playing them is a suicide 90% of the time..

Dunno what happened in the two years i left but so many lights now are atrocious to play. I'm kinda upset they nerfed my Osiris's i used to love those lights, now they are fodder.

Really outside of Fleas, Locusts and Piranhas most lights are poor to bad.. Urbies, Adders and kitfoxes are some what playable as hit and run things.

Even Panthers and Wolfhounds are pretty bad these days.

[Vlad Ward]

All Mechs are best in packs. 4 players are still 4 players. What do you do against 4 Heavies? You melt.

[GuavaPastry]

The best light mech by a mile, the Flea 17, was heavily nerfed with the MASC change. All light mechs were nerfed by the PPC/AC velocity increase.

[crazytimes]

There's absolutely no reason to take most lights into soup queue unless you want to handicap your team in the interest of adding variety to your playing experience. I've got a couple of lights I bought for the dank meme experience and haven't played since soup queue and PSR.

Heavies carry a lot more armour, higher heat capacity and can even be faster than lights. With no meaningful objectives, there aren't many rational reasons to play most lights.

[Requiemking]

Samial, on 29 March 2021 - 06:30 PM, said:

Lights best work in packs so if you play solo you most likely aren't.. Players also tend to not work well in groups with randoms. There are so many poor light mechs that playing them is a suicide 90% of the time..

Dunno what happened in the two years i left but so many lights now are atrocious to play. I'm kinda upset they nerfed my Osiris's i used to love those lights, now they are fodder.

Really outside of Fleas, Locusts and Piranhas most lights are poor to bad.. Urbies, Adders and kitfoxes are some what playable as hit and run things.

Even Panthers and Wolfhounds are pretty bad these days.

Oh, it's been longer than two years. The last time Lights were actually competent as a weight class was back in 2016 before the Rescale. After that, Lights progressively got worse and worse as a whole due to poorly thought out changes such as Engine Desync and various weapon and quirk nerfs(To Clarify, I don't dislike Engine Desynch as a whole. I just think it was handled very poorly. Seriously, the Linebacker, a 65 ton Heavy, is more agile than the entire 35 ton roster).

[JediPanther]

crazytimes, on 30 March 2021 - 12:08 AM, said:

There's absolutely no reason to take most lights into soup queue unless you want to handicap your team in the interest of adding variety to your playing experience. I've got a couple of lights I bought for the dank meme experience and haven't played since soup queue and PSR.

Heavies carry a lot more armour, higher heat capacity and can even be faster than lights. With no meaningful objectives, there aren't many rational reasons to play most lights.

There are a few reasons to play lights but it's mostly your play style than any thing else. Pgi focuses the game on rewarding damage above all else. Just look at the requirements for event rewards as proof. I love the light speed and anything under 90kph doesn't seem to be moving to me so I have a game recording software that displays fps in the corner. some people can't stand going 80kph or more unable to process the constant speed along with everything else it takes to play lights. In lights you must process a lot of information in seconds far more faster than a slow moving giant shoot me sign of an assault.

In lights you also must be the thrill seeker. You might last 30 seconds doing a pitiful 20 alpha then dead from a guass hit or you might last an entire match doing the damage of two or three assaults. I have done both but have not bothered to play recently. I have an imigur with a few screenshots. i've also been one of the firsts to get ace of spades in the lolcuts so my xp with lights is fairly big.

For rewards over all do you ever notice how small and nearly nonexistent the in-game pay out is? It doesn't matter what class or weapon you use because it pays the same regardless. Map design from an old 2012 pc gamer article about mwo stated that maps are designed to have you shooting or encountering the opfor in about a minute. That eliminates any need for "scouting" negating it to just fire a uav and move on. Not that you need to worry about that in solo play when players just lemming to the same old gids anyway.

Lights are so nerfed overall that you'll almost never spectate one clutching out a win in a solo game any more. Some thing they use to be able to do well before the REscale and engine desync.

[feeWAIVER]

in a light, I can 100% solo kill an assault, and still lose rank at the end of the game... That's frustrating.

[Alexander of Macedon]

It's no surprise. Playing lights you have to put in four times as much effort to get half the match score and rewards.

This is directly the fault of MS being tied to raw damage. You're punished for spending time doing anything other than farming damage. Lights do just about everything but farm damage -- they kill efficiently, spot targets, capture objectives, and accomplish a whole range of soft goals which are difficult to quantify (splitting enemy attention, drawing fire away from the main line, distracting enemy fire support, &c.).

Until the day where PGI unfucks the match score system to reward things other than braindead damage farming you're better off just playing a heavy or assault and spamming alpha strikes. I made a second account to run lights on and the only regret is that I can't transfer my hero lights or cosmetics to it. Not having to worry about running a sweaty tryhard match in my MCII-B to make up for every light drop that wasn't perfect is a big relief.

[Wildstreak]

A lot of these responses are why I posted this, maybe the 0.01% chance kicks in this gets noticed.

Meanwhile Gunfire Reborn is so much fun.

[The Testiclops]

I wish we had a medium and below mode for matches. I think that would be super fun. I try piloting heavies and assaults but I'm just not effective at all. I end up being detrimental. The story completely changes when I play lights and mediums.

[ScrapIron Prime]

I did play nothing but lights for a day. Tried out the 3-LL Raven 3L for a while and did okay. It doesn’t hang tough like my Centurion AL, but ECM helps keep it from being a target. And I also played my 3-ERML spider that I call Squirrel Prime. Getting half the enemy team to chase you usually results in a win for the team, but it’s not worth much in the way of match score...

[Darian DelFord]

As an exclusive (Almost completely retired MWO) light pilot, its the same problems with lights we have been screaming about for years now. Nothing is going to change. They have chased all but a very few dedicated lights away.

Edited by Darian DelFord, 30 March 2021 - 08:28 PM.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

Requiemking, on 30 March 2021 - 09:20 AM, said:

Oh, it's been longer than two years. The last time Lights were actually competent as a weight class was back in 2016 before the Rescale. After that, Lights progressively got worse and worse as a whole due to poorly thought out changes such as Engine Desync and various weapon and quirk nerfs(To Clarify, I don't dislike Engine Desynch as a whole. I just think it was handled very poorly. Seriously, the Linebacker, a 65 ton Heavy, is more agile than the entire 35 ton roster).

While I'm not against helping lights shine more, the above is objectively false. There is one (1!) 35 chassis that has inferior mobility stats than the (very agile) Linebacker and that is the Cougar. Get your facts straight.
Also note that lights can be exceptionally strong in the lower tiers but get more difficult moving towards T1 where people actually can land their shots.

[Dogstar]

Shatterpoint, on 29 March 2021 - 04:57 PM, said:

Getting 1shot by the army of current sniper builds sucks.
Always losing PSR despite getting kills/scouting/being useful sucks.
Being stuck with the few mechs that can use stealth armor sucks.

They're really good for keeping your PSR down if you actually like to stick in T5

and it's quite fun to be the squirrel at times

Edited by Dogstar, 31 March 2021 - 05:13 AM.